


RED BEAST - Book four : Montmorency

by FreyaLor



Series: RED BEAST [4]
Category: French History RPF
Genre: 17th century French politics, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Bipolar Disorder, Dom/sub, Enemies to Lovers, Journey, M/M, Power Dynamics, Power Play, Recovery, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Slow Burn, Trauma, Violence, historical fiction - Freeform, improvement, learning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-19
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:28:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 34,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21859069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreyaLor/pseuds/FreyaLor
Summary: Ten years of Richelieu and Louis XIII's life, between 1624 and 1634, from Richelieu's first Royal Council to the Thirty Years War.Ten years of pure French History, with an added twist : Armand and Louis do more, much more than just work together for France.Don't be fooled by the historical details, the violence, the angst : this is gay romance, and nothing else. This is the ten-years journey of a lonely King learning to become a better man for the love of a visionary priest.BOOK FOUR : The Treason of Montmorency (1631-1634)
Relationships: Louis XIII of France/Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu
Series: RED BEAST [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1493687
Comments: 13
Kudos: 54





	1. August the 3rd 1631, Underground tunnels, Paris.

**Author's Note:**

> Additional warnings : smut (anal).

No one knows I'm here.

I am King of France, there is a law for my every move, a code for my every word, and yet in this whole wretched Palace, _no one knows I'm here_. In every other moment of my life, I cannot take one step that isn't watched, prepared, or cared for. My cup is filled before I'm even thirsty. My clothes are warmed before I even wake up. There's always someone to open my doors, to announce my name, to light candles along my path.

So, precisely because I am King of France, walking alone in this narrow tunnel with a small lantern gripped in my hand deliciously feels like an act of _resistance_. The damp walls of bare stone, the dusty ground under my feet, the faint wind whistling in my ears and the spiders crawling between my feet won't darken my smile of excitement. This passage is shabby for sure, but _no one knows I'm here._

A few weeks after my mother's departure for Blois, Armand sent word for an audience very late at night. I was retiring to bed, dismissing my last servants, delighted to be alone for twenty minutes before they'd return and take me to the Queen's apartments again.

Since my Beast is far too cautious to even wander near my apartments without an official motive and had never been seen in my bedroom except when I’ve been too sick to stand, my first thought was for very bad news. But as I ordered for him to come in, he stepped close with peaceful features, his graceful hands empty of those documents he always carries around.

He didn't look like bad news _at all._

Stunned by his recklessness, I still sent the valet outside with a pleased grin. It was true, after all, that I had dreamt a thousand times about his lithe body warming up this huge, lonely bed of mine, but the Palais Cardinal was always deemed safer, more discrete, and a hundred yards away from the prying eyes of the Louvre. State business was an endless source of reasons for us to meet there, even if I found the building and maintenance of those excuses tiresome.

When the valet had closed the doors I went for the best use of the twenty minutes we had, moving to grab his waist, but to my sour surprise, he dodged my hands, pleading for safety, and rushed to pull all curtains shut.

I watched him, dumbfounded, make three consecutive tours on my bedroom, shifting objects, throwing cloths upon mirrors, turning painting slightly sideways, and at some point, I had the disturbing feeling that the place was filled with spy holes and that Richelieu knew about _every one of them._

“Will you explain what the Hell you think you're doing?” I growled, and he obediently strode back to me.

He pulled a small, plain-looking key out of his sleeve, then, and placed it into my hand. His fingers closed my own around the small object, and he kissed my knuckles in what seemed to be real joy.

With that, he gently beckoned me towards my library. I frowned in confusion, but his eyes were quite clear that evening, his seawall holding tight, so I followed him without a word. He passed his deft hands along the rows of ancient books I never cared to read, and when his fingertips grazed the ornate side of the shelf next to the hearth, he gasped in satisfaction.

“There.” He said.

And he cautiously slid a fragment of a carved fleur-de-lis aside to reveal a hidden lock, seamlessly embedded in the woodwork of the furniture. I leaned forward, examining this masterpiece of camouflage and frowned at the key in my hand. I looked up at him, my throat constricted by too many questions, but he simply nodded, almost giddy with trepidation.

“Please.” He asked.

I shrugged and turned the key in the old lock.

A loud click was heard above our heads, and with an amazed curse, I saw a whole panel of the shelf revolving inwards, uncovering a dark, narrow staircase spiralling down towards the Earth.

“It was there.” I hissed. “This bloody passage was there all along.”

It was an old legend my father's servants shared, a secret passage Henri IV had been using to leave his apartments unnoticed and meet his mistresses in their own bedrooms at night. I had been interested in discovering this tunnel at first when I was crowned King in turn and moved into my father's bedroom, but no one seemed to know where the door was or what had happened to the key.

With time, I forgot about it. I never had a use for a secret passage after all. I never had anything to hide, or anyone else to meet at night than my cold, unloving wife.

_I guess I was the dull King._

“How come _you_ , among all others,” I grunted at Armand, “not only know about the passage but have the bloody key to it in your sleeve?”

He just gazed down the stairs, shivering at the gush of cold damp air escaping from the depths of it, waving a vague hand towards the Palais Cardinal.

“All plans and measurements of the Louvre have been recently moved to my study since you had the grace to name me superintendent of your house.” He explained. “The passageways figured upon the most ancient of them, dating from the reign of Henri III. They're all in tatters, really, and needed time to be put together. A time obviously no one else cared to take.”

I huffed unsurprised. _Of course._ Never underestimate a clever man who cannot sleep at night.

“As for the key,” He added in a darker tone, “it fell in your mother's share of the inheritance. But since she had no idea of the function of this key, she discarded it, and I found it many years ago in the Petit Luxembourg's attics, among many other things she couldn't see the purpose of.”

I froze and watched him closely then, wondering _how many_ other things exactly my mother hasn't seen the purpose of, before I realised her most unappreciated work of art was, in fact, standing right in front of me. Instinctively, I brushed his hair, and he leaned into the touch, all sadness on his face vanishing as fast as it came. He pointed at the stairway then, speaking slowly, like he always does when he wants to be listened to.

“Well, this passage was initially built to lead to the bedrooms downstairs and the chapel of the west wing. But at some point, the tunnel almost meets a whole network of other passageways, all as old as Paris can be, one of them running under the Louvre’s courtyard straight to my apartments in the Palais Cardinal.”

I stared, dazed, at the spiral of stone descending in front of us. It looked, as Armand's meaning sunk in, more and more welcoming. Though he lowered his head in a humble, yet enticing move, excitement had come back rushing into his voice as he added, “I have made arrangements for a junction to be dug.”

I knew it. _I bloody knew it._

I let out a small laugh, thrilled by the smell of freedom this doorway was offering.

We'd never need pretexts anymore. This was nothing more than the promise of his skin, covered by secrecy, _whenever I wanted_.

I growled in bliss, gripped the back of his neck and kissed his mouth in raw hunger, pushing his slender frame against the shelf. He didn't look like he was about to protest, but a knock on the door sounded the death knell of our twenty minutes, and he pulled apart to cup my face.

“Now, please remember!” He hammered. “Get down the stairs, walk forward for fifty steps, then turn left and left again. Don't miss the turns, or you'll get lost.”

With that, he laid a hasty kiss on the side of my mouth, slid the hidden door into place, and carefully stepped back to a reasonable distance between a King and his Minister.

Anne asked me twice why I kept smiling that night.

It’s been eight months by now, and though I’ve grown used to that smell of freedom, the loud clicking noise above my head as I turn the key in the hidden lock still sends a cheerful thrill down my spine.

The colour of the walls changes from brick to limestone. That’s the mark. At my left, the opening of the junction appears, and after a dozen yards, I’m in the ancient tunnel under the Louvre’s courtyard. One more turn left, and there come the final thirty yards until the stairs to his apartments.

Will he be asleep? It’s dreadfully late.

I wish I could have come sooner, but I still need to wash twice between my return from Anne’s rooms and my flight towards his. It is _right now_ I’m walking towards mortal sin I know, but am I to blame if it's _her_ bed, not his, that always leaves me soiled and filthy? Her icy skin, her false praise.

Overpriced perfume thrown over the stale smell of a room that has never known open air.

Deprived of my mother’s influence, and with Gaston proving his _worth_ once more by running out of the country, Anne’s feelings for me have evolved into an amiable kind of fear I think, and the small talk between us is kept to a minimum. I am visibly still doing her some good in bed, though, and she’s wondering, I suppose, which one of the Ladies of the Court I am thinking about as I lie down on her. That’s why I always make sure to show myself very kind to at least two among the youngest and fairest of the lot. I pick them very pious, to be safe from any unwanted return of affection, and remember to switch targets every other six months.

It’s bothersome to a nightmare, but it might leave history clean from the fact that women disgust me to the bone, and I only find pleasure in the sheets of a mad priest.

I jump up the cramped staircase leading to the door that opens to another door, this one giving access to the corridor running straight to his apartments. Impatient, like every damn time, I use the same key and slide aside a wooden panel that is, in fact, a part of the decorated wall behind his writing desk, the opening absolutely invisible from inside the room, just like in my library.

A gush of warm air, scented with herbs and dried ink, fills my lungs as I step in. His study welcomes me with radiant shades of chestnut and candlelight. He’s there, leaning over his desk wearing the loosest of his dressing gowns, and a thin white chemise.

Tension I hadn’t even noticed drops off my shoulders in a heartbeat.

It’s half past midnight. _My own day has begun_.

He jumps at the sound of the panel sliding back into place, and spins around in a whirl of red brocade, his face lightening up.

“Louis!” He gasps, and my skin _tingles_.

Like every damn time.

I quietly smother the flame of my lantern and lay it down on a cupboard, but that’s all the respite I’ll give him. After that, I run to him, devour his mouth, and there is so little fabric, so little weight between our skins that I already hear myself moaning in anticipation. He embraces my want with docile, slithering moves, and the urge to push him back against his desk and spread his legs wide right now is almost unbearable.

My taste for rough, quick lovemaking hasn’t changed in these months, I fear. He’d accept every bruise, every wound my passion would leave upon his body I know, he always has after all, but dear Armand’s skin is thin as paper, his nerves just as fragile, and truth be told, _I’m done hurting him._

Besides, his own pleasure is nice to hear, and I only get the best of it if I stay gentle.

With time, I have learned, I guess, the discipline of compromise.

So, I simply steal a taste from the crook of his collarbone and then, merciful, I let go and ask for wine. He nods, rushing to serve me, and I might watch for a while the frail skin of his ankles being licked by the silken fabric of his chemise. When I’m satisfied with the display, I absent-mindedly glance down at the mess on his desk.

He was obviously working upon the plans for his new town and castle of Richelieu again. I see clever street designs, sketches of building decoration, sewer networks, and rosebush gardens.

I idly shuffle through maps and charts with a fond smile, satisfied to see his name finally getting the prestige it deserves. My branding him governor of the abbeys of Citeaux and Cluny, those monstrous wealth factories of the Clergy, seems to be bearing fruit already.

“I see you’re making good use of the scandalous fortune I’ve granted you.” I laugh.

He comes back with a glass of the fine Bordeaux he always keeps in here for me.

“Your Majesty made me a Duke.” He says, bowing gracefully. “Now allow me to build a Duchy worthy of the title.”

I gulp down the wine, let out an appreciative groan, and on a whim, lean towards him and lick a slow circle around his ear, whispering there, “You’d still deserve the title without an acre of land to claim yours or one single clean shirt to wear.”

This earns me a low whimper of bliss, and I think his knees buckled because his hand flies to grab my sleeve with sheer reverence. Now, the praise has been sincere, of course, but speaking it at the right time and with the right voice is part of a game that never fails to bring its rewards.

It’ll make him _very thankful_ , and later, in bed, I’ll find my advantage in that.

“Your majesty is aware, I know,” he purrs, “that though I’d wish the rest of Europe to share your opinion, the prestige of all countries is still judged upon _futilities_ such as those I am building.”

“You shouldn’t worry about anyone else’s opinion than mine.”

Every time I tell him this, he looks at me the same way. As if he’d truly want his whole world to be reduced to the simple care for my comfort, beyond our names, duties, and rank, beyond France, beyond time, beyond history itself, in a world where he'd be nothing else but my devoted lover.

It can be troubling, the _depths_ of his boundless love make me dizzy sometimes, but it never lasts. He always ends up shuddering his thoughts away, and today is no exception. He gestures at a corner of his study at some point, where hundreds of artworks are stacked, some wrapped, some bare, piling up to the ceiling.

“Still,” he explains, “I have taken the liberty to purchase a collection of antiques and recent paintings meant to adorn some of Your Majesty’s possessions. By example, those caryatides from the sixth century, both absolutely unique in beauty and state of preservation, will be placed in Fontainebleau.”

I have a distracted look for the tall marble Venuses he’s so _smitten_ with, and though I guess I can admit their elegance, they ignite no flame, no passion in my heart. I only spot a few framed battle scenes next to them I could take a closer look at, only to check if the weapons are painted right, but otherwise, this colourful mess has no interest to me.

_I guess I’m the dull King._

I don’t mind him spending fortunes for those trinkets. He’s not vain, that man, not vain at all, and everything he does, of course, he does for God, he does for France.

And for the man who in his eyes encompasses both.

_For me._

I know these piles of absurd ornaments, sensibly allocated to their rightful place in every castle and cathedral around Paris, will only bring more status, more credit to the French Court, strengthening our position as an unavoidable force in Europe. I can trust his refined taste to make the right decisions and to be honest, I’m bloody glad to leave this whole affair to him.

He’s serving me, I know. Even in this language I cannot understand.

He speaks some more, about a painter named Poussin, another called Champaigne, about Patroclus, Hermes, and an illuminated Bible in pure gold sheet he bought for the Chapelle Royale, but eventually I empty my glass of wine, sit sideways on his desk and slip my hands under his dressing gown to brush the subtle curve of his waist.

His speech dissolves into a sigh. Good.

_I have made myself clear._

I now grab what I was stroking and pull him towards me, making him stumble forward, his hands gripping my shoulders. Humming my approval, I shift my fingers around to cup his firm buttocks, and if he gasps, scandalised, I can’t be fooled. I saw his eyes darkening like evening skies.

I give him a rough squeeze, and he does cry out flustered, but the sly beast, fearing my intent to throw him flat upon his desk no doubt, still finds the time to push some of his beloved plans out of danger. I roll my eyes, glancing down at the oh-so-precious papers he needs to protect from my _brutality._

Among them a signed, thus approved, study for the castle's main gates catches my attention. It is featuring, above a sumptuous Arc de Triomphe, an equestrian statue of me, the details of it so vivid, so intricate I even recognise the horse immediately.

That horse, so lively he could be jumping out of that paper sheet right now, it's Aiglon, my young stallion of Versailles.

The message is so clear I let out a dry gulping sound, my heart missing a beat or two.

The message is ardent and meant for me alone. _It's all about you_ , even his castle says. _It's all for you._

_Armand._

Sensing me freeze, he followed my gaze and understood. When our eyes meet, he smiles, still meek, still obedient, but definitely _proud_. Aflame, I growl in sheer hunger, biting sharp into the flesh of his neck, my fingertips grazing the cleft of his backside, unequivocal about my plans. His breath shortens, and I feel him tremble.

“Bed,” I order. “Now.”

He nods, panting, staggers backwards, and treads carefully to his bedroom. I follow, unable once more to leave his skin out of my reach until I lock his door behind my back.

He walks to his bed, then, but doesn't touch it. He turns to me instead, hands joined upon his heart, shoulders low, eyelids shy, waiting for my slightest word with feverish _yearning_ , and if there is a more enjoyable sight to see, well, I still have to witness it.

I grant myself the pleasure to make this moment last, leaning against the door, admiring the only painting I do have interest for.

His bedroom is half as small as anyone would expect of him, the furniture and walls remaining plain and quite discrete. The ceremonial fabrics and rarest woods are saved for his reception room and study. If the rest of his apartments declare, Richelieu's bedroom _whispers_.

His bed is still wide and comfortable, covered by a canopy of red velvet, and his window of yellow glass has the best view of Notre-Dame, but the chairs and trunks around look functional and cheap, strangely older than the rest. I've always thought those might be the remnants of much darker times, in Luçon or in the town of Richelieu itself, whatever it might have looked like by the time he was born there, son of a governess and a broke courtier.

On the far corner, next to the bed, a monstrous ceramic stove is working, bathing the room in a pleasant glow, and spreading the scent of the herbal tea he keeps warm there. Those stoves are barely used in Alsace, and impossible to find in Paris. This one might be the only specimen this side of the Rhine, and of course, it had to be right here.

Upon the unvarnished wallpaper hang only three drawings, none of them of any value.

The first is a portrait of the elegant, yet tired woman I think is his mother.

Another is a map of France as it was thirty-five years ago, meticulously drawn by a child who, I am sure, was no one else but him.

The last one is the first page of that _oratorio_ manuscript I offered him three years ago, after La Rochelle, sealed away from the damages of time in a delicate frame of cherry wood.

This tiny fragment of space is his own Versailles, a place without façade, protocol or lies.

A place at the core of his world, a place that _is_ Armand.

And he's waiting for me there, eager and vulnerable, devilishly docile.

_My fighter, my storm, my shadow, my love._

“Undress.” I spit, to hide the trembling in my voice.

And he obeys, gently, peeling layers of cloth off his milky skin with gestures so delicate they're almost defiant. Once naked, instead of letting me watch, he shies away into his bed, and I have no idea if it is out of genuine modesty or to ignite in me the _thrill of the chase._

Does it matter after all?

Divine creature, or sly demon, it's Armand, my dear Armand, and I want him so hard it hurts.

I shrug my cloak and nightgown off and leap onto the bed, throwing his covers out of my way. Petrified between apprehension and need, he watches me with wide, fascinated eyes as I crawl upon him until my shadow in candlelight paints half of his face in darker hues. Looming above him, I feed for a while upon the flickers of orange light upon his smooth stomach, before I lose patience and snap my fingers at his legs.

“Open up,” I mumble.

He bites his lips in a lustful shiver, and slowly slides his knees apart, making room for me at last. I dive down, crush him under my weight and claim his mouth again, stifling his moan as our groins meet in sparks of pleasure. I feel his arms, like graceful snakes, wrapping themselves around me, his thin fingers softly tangling into my hair, tentative, doubtful, as if after four whole years he still couldn't believe I'm here in his bed.

_Oh, I'll show you how real I am._

Nibbling a famished path down to his side, I reach blindly for the oil he keeps under his mattress. I don't have to look anywhere other than the shudders of his hips. I know his bed better than mine.

He cries out as I bite deep in the soft, untainted skin of his waist, but again, as always, _not only in pain._

I unscrew the lid of the vial I soon find, spread its content on my hand, and when I lift up my own body to slide soaked fingers between his thighs, he's so aroused he welcomes me with a pleading whine. I smirk, grab his face with my other hand and watch his eyes as I thrust two fingers deep.

He wails, the dark embers catching fire, his nails scratching my back, _yes, more of that._ I crook my fingers up, rubbing him right _there_. His eyes blur, his pink tongue darting out to lick his lips, his hips jerking up to get more of what I give. I move in circles, slow, deliberate, and _orchestrate_ the sounds of his cries like the easiest of my compositions.

_  
I know his body better than mine._

I make it last as long as I can, but the music of his moans, the jolts of his spine, and God, the sensation of his burning _silk_ around my fingers–

This man will be my death.

  
I feel myself buckling harshly against his inner thigh, grunting in rising ecstasy, and I glance down, _oh bloody Hell_. I'm engorged, dripping on his stomach, and if he whimpers like that one more time, I think I’m done. So I withdraw my hand, and in three quick moves, I sheathe myself into him, still gripping his jaw so he can’t look away. He could be readier, but I cannot care anymore. He yells, _yes, more of that._ His soft, beautiful cries of agony.

This rage in my guts I know so well howls for something short, crude and violent, yanking my pleasure out of his docile frame, and he'd take it, I know he'd take _everything._

But his skin is thin as paper, his nerves just as fragile.

  
_I swore to myself I was done hurting him._

I'm not the man I once was, not anymore, not ever. I have learned, I have grown, and my father's portraits will be silent forevermore. I am King of divine right, unquestioned and absolute. _If I can make this man feel safe._

So even as I’m filling him, fire roaring in my guts, burning all of my control, I still force myself to freeze, blinking lust away from my eyes, and wait for him to relax. Yet, despite my goodwill, the _feeling_ of him, slick and shivering, wide open for me, drives me completely mindless, and soon enough I have to _press_ a little, shaking in restraint, _almost imploring._

“ _Armand_.” I gasp.

And he inhales, then, closing his eyes, adjusting to me, letting his boundless trust in me ease his pain into desire again. With a subtle arching of his hips he gives a clear signal, and I _howl_ , kissing his cheekbone in raw thankfulness, starting to move inside of him with raging bliss. 

He's tight, scorching as he always has been, and it takes a lot not to let my eyes roll back.

I need, I want, I _crave_ to ravish him in five vicious minutes, but I keep it sluggish, my stare fixed upon his eyelids, amazed by how intense his reactions are to the slightest wave of my hips. He needs so little, barely a touch, I know, I've seen him come at the mere _sight_ of my climax. I could just stay like this, buried inside of him unmoving, and he'd shudder before long. That's this sickness he has, he feels everything, _everything_ far too much.

The key had never been to make him come, but to make him _last_.

But we have time, now, don't we Armand?

There's only you and me here, not a shadow in our painfully earned skies.

I slide in and out, gently, consuming his maddening high-pitched cries, caging my pleasure to control his. Whenever I feel him grab my hair in panic I pause, delaying him, answering to his feverish supplications with a cruel, silent smile.

I only show mercy when I feel him trashing on the bed beneath me, eyes unfocused, his hips meeting mine in wild, unashamed dances. Then I thrust deeper once or twice, though not faster at all, and allow him to come by dropping a short word of praise in the crook of his neck.

“Very good, Armand.” I pant. “Now _scream for me_.”

In a heartbeat, his legs around me clench hard, his arms gripping me as if he could fall, and his whole body quivers inside.

“Louis!” He breathes, and _scream, he does._

While he's high with pleasure I can unleash my hunger, at last, pounding him with untamed need as he shudders in aftershocks, his pliant, lively body taking the blows I impose upon him with wanton grace.

I hear my own cries rise as his recede, and my rhythm crumbles into an uneven craze. I grab a fistful of his hair, yank it backwards and bite hard into his throat, marking him mine again, groaning like a wild hound as I’m sure I am dying in my own fire, dissolving into him until there’s nothing left of me.

All strength leaves me afterwards, and I pull out with a moan to collapse on his mattress. I lie there heaving, staring at the blurred lines the world has become, vaguely feeling his fingertips stroke my face in adoration. I take my time, counting the decreasing waves of pleasure passing on my spine, awestruck, as always, by the forceful orgasms he never fails to give me.

_My whole life, without a clue._

I distractedly sweep my tongue on my dried lips, look up at his flushed face leaning towards me and let out in a throaty, broken voice, “You perfect, _wicked_ creature.”

He laughs then, beaming pride and confidence, and if there is a more satisfying sight to see, well, I still have to witness it. He kisses my brow, drags himself out of bed with visible effort and walks towards the stove to fetch a warm, damp cloth in a basin there.

He cleans us both and serves me wine in a now well-rehearsed ritual, only granting himself the right to curl at my side once I confirm all my needs are duly met.

We remain just as we are, listening to the muffled fire of the stove, my fingers grazing winding paths up and down his waistline. After a while, I realise I've started humming again, and I chuckle. I obviously do that when I'm happy.

I inspect him for signs of exhaustion, then, hesitating between sleep and talk, and since he looks quite fine, I nod towards the study's door.

“Come on,” I tell him. “What is the news?”

He looks up at me in mild confusion, trying to understand what kind of news I'm referring to, but, lazy, I just wait. He always guesses right anyway. 

“The diplomatic envoys?” He asks.

_See?  
_ I nod, and he points in the direction of the Louvre with a perplexed hand.

“But, Louis.” He mutters. “There is a Council scheduled precisely for that discussion tomorrow at ten.”

I shrug, huffing my sheer disdain for the array of supernumerary idiots my other ministers are. It's been a long time since Armand's has been the only voice I listen to anyways. _I want to hear only his words and no one else's until the end of time._

“The Council is a pathetic show imposed by protocol.” I spit. “I make my decisions with you alone, and that's final. Tell me what I need to know.”

He stares at me in puzzled awe for a whole minute before he shakes himself out of it and gathers his thoughts with a slow rub of his temple. I smile again, content, slouching back into his bed. Diplomatic relations and state business are discussed right here by now, under this canopy of red velvet, between messy sheets and buzzing skin. This is how the country is ruled. _This is who we are and the ballet we dance._

“The news from Joseph is all good.” He starts. “He is, as we speak, still crossing the German empire, gathering the Catholic states to our causes in the hope of forming a barrier of neutral, if not friendly, lands to block Spain's progression up North.”

I huff in appreciation. I’m still to understand exactly what makes that nutcase monk tick, but I cannot deny the inhuman amount of work this single man can accomplish by himself, hundreds of miles away from Paris with a small carriage and a trunk full of papers.

“As long as we keep feeding the rivalry between German electors,” Armand adds, his fingertips drawing figures on the sheet covering my waist, “Ferdinand II will remain unable to make any significant attack against France, but we still need to support Joseph’s actions by our own diplomatic envoys to Sweden, in order to channel their... rage for war towards the German states Joseph couldn't move to our side.”

I nod again. This plan we share about the balance of Europe is nothing new, but though it might have been one thing to scheme and design it, it's another to keep up with the persistent work required to _enforce_ it.

“Who do you suggest?” I sigh, rolling on the bed to grab my glass of wine.

“Charnacé and Brézé.” He replies.

I frown at him over my shoulder. I know Brézé very well. The valiant Officer has followed my army from Lyon straight to Casal, and if the bravery of this man was still to be proven, the fact that he married the youngest, maddest of Armand's sisters is enough of a sign.

“But Charnacé is touchy, to say the least.“ I object. “The man could unleash war upon badly salted soup.”

“He could indeed, Your Majesty, but his determination is without compare. As for his... over sensitivity, trust Brézé to channel it towards wiser goals. My brother-in-law is, believe me, used to this kind of thing.”

_Oh, I believe you alright._ Is Nicole du Plessis-Richelieu not locked up in her bedroom every day of the year, talking to her stillborn child from fifteen years ago when she's not howling that her bottom is made of glass and she can't sit on anything solid?

I gulp down my wine and nod my consent.

“Very well,” I grumble. “We'll send those men to Sweden. Anything else?”

He opens his mouth, his face darkening, and with a shaky breath, he waves his hand towards the windows, offering a copper-washed painting of the bell towers of Notre Dame.

“This winter has lasted for too long.” He muses. “Most of my local agents foresee a very bad year. The crops will be too scarce. There will be nothing much to stand across the plague's path in the southern provinces. Now, the tax officers system we installed is working excellently, and though this income might feed our greater purposes just fine, the... _meticulousness_ of those state officers is invoked among other things as the reason for a series of riots in some provinces.”

I drop my empty glass on the floor and bite my lips, feeling the same black pit forming in my heart. Might it be from Richelieu's informants or my own, I am reminded every day of the hardships of my people, and the fact that I can't seem to find a solution to the Hapsburg threat while providing prosperity to the families of France is constant torture.

If I hadn't Armand at my side every day, pushing me towards our future dream with the headstrong force of his own conviction, I'm afraid I would have lost hope a long time ago.

“Where?” I rasp.

“Guyenne, mostly, but also Provence, Anjou, Berry... and recently, Languedoc.”

Dear God, it's not _some provinces_ , it's half of the bloody country. I sink into the bed, rubbing my face into my hands, trying to get a grip on my purpose, my vision.

Come on, calm down. Breathe in, breathe out, _focus._

“Is Condé under control?” I ask from beneath my fingers.

“I have him under close surveillance, yes.”

“Good. If he can stop himself from acting like a pig, he will maintain Guyenne and Provence in order.”

Armand nods, his eyes lost in mental lists again, starting to show the signs of exhaustion I didn't find earlier. I huff a bittersweet smile and kindly pull him down into the bed, easing his head against my arm, laying the covers above us both. I kiss his worried brow once or twice, showing him I'm satisfied with his service, ushering him towards rest with slow, soothing strokes along his shoulders.

As I feel his body grow limp under my hands, on a whim, I lay down a last word of reassurance.

“Besides, my old friend Montmorency had just left Paris for his lands last week. The man is loyal and trustworthy, he'll bring peace to Languedoc in no time I'm sure.”

The room is too dark and the hour too late, but I think I feel him tense for a second, his closing eyes snapping open, his deft fingers clenching around the sheets. But if something grim washed over his mind, he doesn't say a word, shifting closer to me instead and begging for my permission to sleep.

I grant it to him with a frown, and he's gone within minutes.

  
Though his bed is the most peaceful place on Earth tonight, I take far too much time to follow him into dreams.


	2. May the 10th 1632, Place de Grève, Paris

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional warning : public execution (beheading), gore

They cleaned the City House, filled it with lys flowers. They stretched blue velvet on the floor and pushed the furniture aside to make the whole place look bigger. They’re all wearing the best outfits they own, the meekest smiles they have.

It does nothing to hide the fact that the Place de Grève just below those windows is nothing short of a _charnel ground._

I step in that huge hall on the first floor, the one with the large bays of stained glass featuring the crests of the Duchies of ancient times, and that wide balcony meant for two things alone.

Weddings _and executions._

The Military Chaplain welcomes me with a stern bow and starts talking about how the accused discarded every opportunity for defence or declaration, only requiring time for his prayers.

As if I had cared about any _declaration_ this treacherous worm would have addressed to me.

Five feet to my left, between two massive pillars supporting the ceiling of carved arches, the Cardinal Duke du Plessis Richelieu is working. Well, he’s officially accompanying me, forced witness just as I am to the gruesome spectacle we both ordered for, but in fact, he’s barely even there. He has two of his informants around him, three if that young monk standing near is another of his spies, and he’s shuffling through the notes and letters they’ve been giving him.

For some, he just nods and shoves them in his sleeves. Those are trivial updates, stored in his inhuman memory for further use.

For others, he hisses a few words back to the messenger, making him repeat them at least once. Those are inquiries for his orders, that he gives in code or in plain words, and could be meant for the man next door or the Court of Sweden for all I know.

For some, he bites his lips and has a calculating glance for me.

Those I will no doubt hear about later, in either very good, or _terrible news._

The Chaplain mutters a few more words about the quality of service he tries to provide to the death sentenced of Paris, fishing, I suppose, for more pension. I’m not even trying to make my looking above his shoulder any less conspicuous.

I shouldn’t be surprised to see the commander Armand has become. Every rank, title, and assignment he needed to attain such power, I gave him myself. I have no right to stare, watching him pull the strings of the empire of law and information he has built with harsh, merciless hands. Every bit of the unwavering authority he terrifies his workforces with, I strengthened with my trust and my affection.

He is my beast, my monster, _my creation now._

Still. I can’t seem to smother my awe, witnessing the way his tendrils of red silk have spread like streams of frost upon my lands, digging deep into the Earth, yanking order and discipline out of France’s chaotic, ancient ways. At the price of his health and sanity, he has created from scratch the most dreadfully efficient pyramid of government officers, dutifully laying tax income, justice reports or any valuable information they can find straight to his slender hands.

His masterpiece. His dearest _State._

And he rules, dear God, he rules over this quiet, cold machine of his with relentless strength, tying every man to his function, punishing anyone who dares to stray away from it.

I’ve seen him order the destruction of thousands of strongholds.

I’ve seen him dismiss agents and replace them without a flinch for their demise.

I’ve seen him sign the disgrace of more than a hundred men.

The crowd of spies he holds in his claws look up at him in raw fear and respect, crawling close with their hands gripped together in prayer. He stands there, master spider upon its web, his eyes frozen and scheming, processing a dozen thoughts at the same time, his decisions quick, his sentences final. This is what I made of him. This is what he has become. This is how he thrived, how he bloomed in the comfort of my love.

The ominous ruler of all that is whispered.

_The dictator of shadows._

I shouldn’t be surprised. He had it in him, every scrap of it, and he had it all along. He was born with a firestorm of madness and resolve burning in his veins. He only needed me to let it loose, that's all.

Above a handful of notes, as if he had sensed my scrutiny, his stare darts up and meets my own.

I have no right to clench my jaw, all of this is nothing more than what he was destined for, but something in me still makes me do it, every damn time. Every damn time, I have that inescapable urge to watch his immense power yield to the shadow of my hand, and I have a slight nod of my chin, my stare on him turning harsher.

_“Submit to me.”_ My eyes order, and as always, the switch happens.

In a blink, everything changes, his stance, his face, his eyes, his voice.

The dictator crumbles and melts, a layer of iron dropped from his shoulders to reveal underneath my dear Armand, still eager, still servile, flashing signals of surrender meant for me alone. His stare falls on the floor, his head tilted aside, his vulnerability gladly offered to my hunger once more.

 _“It’s still for you.”_ His eyes reassure. _“It’s still all about you.”_

I feel a surge of warmth wrapping around my very soul, then, every time, _every damn time_ , my name glorified, my world into place, and with a liberated sigh, I can finally look away, allowing him to go on.

I mumble my thanks to the Chaplain, and when the Bailiff asks me if he can proceed, I briefly consent. The officer carries my order to the soldiers around, and one of them darts downstairs to warn the prison guards. Richelieu quietly dismisses his spies and shifts closer to me, keeping his poise haughty but his shoulders low.

With that, a row of five Musketeers aligns outside the balcony, mouths thin, hands on their swords, and from below their feet, I hear a mighty surge of screams and applause flying into the air, _God, how many are they on that wretched square?_

I bite my lips, inhale sharply, straighten my back and stride outside.

I force myself not to blink at the generous sun of May, passing a sullen gaze upon the slate rooftops of Paris before I look down at the Place de Grève. The cobblestones are filled with a noisy, rolling mass of people, raising hats and pointing fingers, howling my name in careless cheer. My father, I remember, used to wave his hand high, encouraging ovations by his own joyful howls. _Well, I am not my father._

I nod, barely a bit more visibly than usual, lifting my hand a few inches above the guardrail. The screams of the crowd double just the same.

After a while, the heavy gates of the City House thunder open, suspending all screams, and a miserable cart is pushed outside on a path painfully cleared through the multitude by the swords of a dozen prison guards. Into the small vehicle, a priest reciting prayers, and one man in a plain chemise.

They cut his hair short. All of it. He had curls to be proud of if I remember correctly. His fatigued face holds no hope anymore, and his neck is exposed bare to the hatred of a crowd that doesn’t even know his name.

His name is Louis de Marillac, and he has forsaken everything holy and virtuous in his life for the fictitious shine of a handful of diamonds, but the people down there, they don’t care. They don’t care. Their eyes are for his throat, hungry for a show, and I’m sure they all hope the executioner will miss his blow or take his time.

That’s why I hate public executions. Those commoners are not here to see justice done. They’re not here to understand what kind of oath this man has failed to, and why punishment had to be ordered. They don’t care about reasons, they don’t care about the law, they live their petty lives oblivious to the vision that’s forcing me to kill this man.

A pack of crows, that’s all they are.

Not the prettiest face my dear people of France has to display for sure.

I open my mouth to speak this last thought out loud for Armand, but as I look around, I realise he remained three steps behind, hidden by the thick curtains of the great hall. _Ah. Of course._

The dictator of shadows still isn’t fond of public appearances. Because he likes to let sunlight fall upon me no doubt, he always did, but also, I’m sure, because his nerves aren’t strong enough to take the sheer rancour he inspires to this crowd.

I am tempted to leave him there, but truth be told, he should not be ashamed. Every action of his has been the extension of my own will, and if he has drawn upon him the hatred of commoners, it was out of sacrifice, never out of disdain.

“Step forward, Cardinal.” I beckon.

His eyes widen in panic, and he crawls further inside, gesturing at the raging crowd. _“Please,”_ he mouths, paling atrociously, but I only growl, imperative, tipping my head towards the cart below my feet.

“This man wanted to shoot a bullet into your head,” I grunt. “I want him to see you standing at my side as he dies in disgrace.”

I see his throat constricting around a gulp, his nervous stare darting towards the Place de Grève, haunted by a caravan of old nightmares, and I follow his thoughts quite easily.

His plan concerning my mother has been predictably flawless. She ran away right as he devised, and was forced to flee up North on the exact path he had prepared. She found every City of the Somme hostile to her presence, and in her panic, the short-sighted mare rushed straight into Richelieu’s trap.

Less than a week later, his informants confirmed the fact that she was in Brussels, and upon the sad excuse of a speech in Council I erased her name from my own family tree. All of her possession fell back into Royal Treasury, half of it left into my Superintendent’s wise care.

I knew it wasn’t over. I sincerely thought she’d give me more respite than one bloody month, that's all.

But dear Mother, of course, has only one purpose.

There has been a time, around Easter celebrations I think, when, as I laid blissful in his bed once more, when instead of bringing me the usual news of diplomacy or trade he handed over to me, contrite, a few letters his spies had intercepted.

I knew, without even a doubt. I knew, by the tortured look in his eyes, exactly who those letters were from. _The mother of all nightmares._

I refused to even look at them.

“Just tell me what she’s scheming,” I said.

He came to sit next to me then, gathering his legs under him, gingerly folding back the letters in half.

“She’s making preparations to help Marillac escape,” he muttered, “gather troops in Fontainebleau, and have me killed at the Procession of Holy Mary next week.”

I roared a hateful curse, banging my fist against the sturdy bed frame. _Damn her._

I should have killed her neat and clean, I know I should have.

“How?” I barked, and he bit his lips, shivering deep.

“Marillac is supposed to hide into the crowd and shoot me in the head as I speak my blessing upon the steps of Notre Dame.” He breathed. “After I’m dead, some rebellious Huguenots would be accused, and my obvious inability to enforce peace even to the heart of the country would be used as a reason to bring... older alliances back to power, having me replaced by Marillac himself.”

A bullet in the head, just like Chalais, so long ago.

A bullet in the head, like finishing off a boar you didn't manage to shoot right in the first place.

My rage, my old rage exploded out of its cage to burn my guts to a crisp, so loud, so high I couldn't see clearly anymore. I gripped the sheets so hard my hands bruised, and I hissed, my eyes lost in the distance, “ _The Hell he will._ ”

Armand had a start, inching away slightly. Not in fear of me, I think, but to leave a bit more space to the heap of fury I had become.

“Now, listen to me.” I went on, my narrowed eyes meeting his. “You will find thirteen judges by tomorrow evening and put up an emergency court-martial in Reuil. Then you will have this sack of filth Marillac brought from Vincennes right away and have him judged on the spot. Do what you must, I don't give a damn, I just want him sentenced to death before the end of the month.”

His stare widened, but ultimately he nodded, a handful of names, I was sure, already being weighted in his head. Then he got up, went for some wine, and because he must have felt I needed it, he untied the belt of his dressing gown as he came back with a full glass.

Later on, he obeyed my every order with unfailing intelligence, and if I'll never know how many of Marillac's judges he actually paid for, the man was still sentenced to death in less than fifteen days.

  
Armand deserves to watch the traitor die today, maybe more than I do. So I extend my hand towards him, my eyes a bit gentler maybe, but straightening my back the way all Bourbons end up learning, reminding him of the King I have become.

“They won't dare, Cardinal,” I whisper, steady, convinced. “They won't _dare_.”

And upon a last look at the savage mass of people on the square, he lets out a shaky breath, letting me grab his arm and pull him forward. His silver hair enters sunlight like a treasure pulled out of darkness, glowing in furtive hues and subtle tones. His red robes hiss their own lament as they brush my boots, his lighter cloak of delicate needlepoint flapping around his shoulders, and below our feet, the screams of the crowd turn to whispers.

I watch the horde of city folk very closely, jaw clenched, eyes cold, daring any one of them to shout the first insult. Around me, the five Musketeers understand what is happening quite perfectly, and let their hand hover above their pistols.

“Richelieu” I hear. “Richelieu is here.”

A few faces look up towards us, too far away to be read clearly.

I feel Armand's arm shivering beneath my grip. His eyes are fixed upon a detail of the guardrail, frozen by panic, awaiting the scorn and sneer no doubt, but after a while, the lonely cart stops in front of the gallows, and the pack of crows is distracted by their thirst for blood. Avid howls rise anew, and a few voices, thankful for the show or impressed by his presence, start to chant blessings for his name along with mine.

“Louis, le Juste!”

  
“Vive le Cardinal!”

Soon enough, nothing else is to be heard in the whole Place de Grève but cheers for both of us, in between demands for Marillac's head and scattered tavern songs.

_“Bénis soient le Roi et le Cardinal!”_

  
In the rush of relieved pride I feel then, I almost bring his hand to my lips and kiss it tenderly. It wouldn't need much, just one twist of my arm; they should see how magnificent he is when he smiles -

_Oh, dear God._

_  
_I gasp, terrified, at my senseless urge to show them all he's mine, here on that balcony meant for two things alone. Executions, and also _weddings._

I am King of France, married already to a woman I cannot love, and who will forever see me as a burden more than an ally. I am King of France, by law and divine right, and my passion for that man is nothing else but a _mortal sin._

I let go of his arm in a confused cough, and though I sense him observing me, I refuse to meet his eyes until my trouble decreases.

I watch, then, panting in turmoil, as Marillac is pushed upon the platform of sturdy wood under the shrieks of a hateful crowd. His chemise is dirty on the knees, no doubt from praying in the bottom of a prison cell. Without velvet, jewels or even hair, he looks truly destitute, like a pathetic mimicry of the great man he once was.

Where is it now, the money she promised you, Marillac?

Where are those jewels you betrayed me for?

What use have they been, those rich doublets, those swords of gold?

Did they bring you more happiness than loyalty would have?

Was it so hard, so unrewarding to be ever faithful to me?

But the one who had been my General doesn't even lift his head up. He mutters amen to the priest as last prayers are recited to him, obediently walking to the small plain cushion laid upon the gallows. At this moment, a hooded, stocky man steps up upon the platform, silencing the whole crowd by the mere act of his presence. Carelessly carried on his shoulder, shining in cheerful daylight, the wide, unearthly sword of executioners.

Under the unbearable weight of Paris' stillness, the thick man lays down his sword upon a rack specially made for the heavy rounded-tip blade and offers Marillac a blindfold. The convicted man hesitates, I think, then accepts. The quiet giant ties it around his head then and goes back to the rack to lift his dreadful sword. With my eyes fixed upon the blackened steel, I whisper to Armand without a thought, “This man knows his business, doesn't he? I don't want another Chalais.”

His gentle, yet tense voice immediately replies, “He is Jean Guillaume, Your Majesty, he's been in this trade all his life. His father himself executed Ravaillac twenty years ago.”

_Oh._

Well, I suppose a man who knows how to quarter another is bound to teach well how to handle that hellish sword right.

Indeed, as the disgraced soldier is pushed until he kneels upon that small cushion, Guillaume seems to gauge Marillac's neck with confident, knowing eyes. He circles around his prey, then, positioning himself according to laws only he is aware of.

Marillac's tied hands slowly rise at his chest's level in prayer, and he lifts his blinded eyes up to the sky.

One, two seconds of deadly silence as the man bear raises his epee to the Heavens.

_And the sword falls._

Moved by the man's immense strength and its own heavy weight, the blade meets the nape of Marillac's neck in a perfect diagonal and cuts the whole head off in one expert move.

The head falls upon the gallows' floorboards with a dull thump, but the pack of crows around remains very still.

Only when the rest of the body follows, gently swaying forward until it collapses like a rag doll next to his own severed part, their screams explode in the thick air, echoing with every voice Paris can have, gathering the whole city in a mad, boundless roar of joy.

The balcony itself starts to vibrate with the sound of it, and I feel Armand's meek hand instinctively searching for the rim of my cloak, his wide haunted eyes unable to leave Marillac's head.

One of the prison guards jumps upon the gallows, grabs a bloodied patch of hair upon it, lifts the dead man's face up towards us, and I know it is tradition, I know it is out of respect, but really, I should make laws to change this appalling show into something _cleaner_.

Down from the soldier's raised arm, Marillac's slack, lifeless mouth is vomiting a thin dash of blood upon what used to be his own back, and Armand next to me whimpers in distress, pale as a ghost, still blindly reaching for me. I give him back my arm as support, quickly nodding for the soldier, so he puts this gruesome thing out of sight.

The disgusting, comical head is thrown back into the cart under the ecstatic bawls of the Place, and Guillaume lifts the rest of Marillac above his shoulder like a sack of grain to let it flop miserably at his head's side.

The great General had a fort of La Rochelle named after him. We drank together for victory, smiling to the same loud, cheerful music. Now he is being carried back to his house in two separate parts so his widow can bury him before the crowd finds it amusing to thrust his head upon a spear.

Paris’ folk shout towards me for a last salute, and I give half a wave, allowing Armand to retreat back into the building. I stay for one more minute, until Marillac's cart disappears around the corner of the street, then spin around with a sharp sigh and strides to the stairs leading to the back of the City House.

I find my Red Beast already waiting in my carriage, shuffling through messages and notes with efficient, yet shaking hands. I let myself fall on the bench next to him and tap the door for the driver to spur the horses. The vehicle starts gently, taking a quieter route around the Place de Grève to avoid the racket and passers-by’s petitions.

I keep my eyes upon him, waiting for him to talk, but we’ll soon pass beyond the Saint Jacques church already, and he still hasn't unclenched his jaw. He's brushing nervous fingertips upon his lips, and I _feel_ , as clearly as I could read, his inner fight against the need to bite them hard. Rolling my eyes in exasperation, I gesture at his papers, trying to pull him out of his darkness.

“Is there any news of Gaston in your coded mess?”

He has a start, his distant eyes shifting up to me, and blinks once or twice before he answers, monotonous, “He was seen in Spanish Luxembourg last week, but he isn't likely to stay there for long. Marie de Medici still strongly intends to spend whatever money she has left for another uprising against the crown, and since Lorraine is defeated and Marillac lies dead, she is very likely to put Gaston once more at the head of the army she’s trying to gather.”

I groan, slumping back in the bench and turning my head towards Paris. We’re now trotting around the imposing silhouette of Saint Germain l'Auxerrois, her rose window in blue and red inviting the nameless and the grand to walk as one towards the holy light.

_Will I ever wake up from the nightmare my family is?_

A few days after Mother's exile, Gaston, feeling the wind of disgrace blowing upon the nape of his neck, hurried to Spain and started writing _endearing_ letters to the Duke of Lorraine, another traitor to fill my gaols with.

Fifty hours after Christmas Eve, Armand brought to the Council the news of my dear brother having _wisely_ used our mother’s money to buy Spanish mercenaries in Vic, apparently willing to march up North while Lorraine's ally, the Governor of Sedan, rushed south to reinforce him.

The joining of their forces was supposed to happen in Fontainebleau, and they would both unleash hell upon Paris.

The Ministers asked for my opinion, and I remember I just stared down into my glass of wine for a long, long time.

Christmas day last year has offered me everything the previous one promised without ever giving. Armand in sumptuous robes, for example, walking close to me as we paraded around Paris, distributing alms and receiving solicitations.

The magnificent Mass he set up for me in Sainte Chapelle, adorned for the first time that day with this golden bible he talked so much about. All the ambassadors and officers gathered there bowing low, praising high, talking about my dear old Paris like the shiniest jewel of Europe. The results of Armand's dedicated work showing in broad daylight, at last, rewarding him with pride and reassurance.

He felt safe, and I was happy.

No, more than that, I was _fulfilled_.

  
For the first time in my life, even this wretched Louvre had become a lovely place, and I didn't want, _I didn't want to go to war._

I put down my glass and ordered for Richelieu to gather the armies all the same, but with a long, bittersweet sigh that earned me a puzzled look from the whole council room, Armand included. We rode to Vic in less than a week, seeing the passing of a new year under the snow in Limousin, and besieged the City with the nonchalance of old habits. Meanwhile, Marshal La Force occupied Sedan with three thousand men, discouraging the Governor to even lift a finger for Gaston.

Vic fell in six days, but as we entered the city, Gaston, _brave, fearless_ Gaston, our mother's _dearest child_ , had already fled to friendlier skies. Armand promised me his informants would soon find him, but, riding back to Paris, I told him I'd be happier if I never heard from him ever again.

If I could wake up, one fine day, with my whole family gone from this world.

“Your Majesty?” His strained voice tries, snapping me out of my thoughts back into the carriage.

I turn to him, noticing anxious red lines coming back around his eyes, his thumb already worried by his sharp white teeth. Far beyond the threat of my brother, it’s his terror of all the demons Marillac’s beheading has awoken in him I feel the most, channelled straight to my own guts by this unholy bond we share.

I steal a quick glance through the window. The Louvre is approaching, and if I don't want to spend my evening bandaging the bloodied pulp he'll surely turn his hands into, well, _I have three minutes._

With a soft, lopsided smile, I pull all the curtains shut and lean toward him. He smells clean, he always does, a discrete blend of herbs and soap I have grown very fond of. I firmly push his papers aside, lifting a tentative hand that strokes his hair at first, but start gripping as soon as he shows signs of appeasement.

I roughly pull him to me, then, my eyes hooked into his, letting my lips ghost above his mouth for a while. No matter the pain, no matter the howling beyond the seawall, I know exactly what he likes by now, and he's bound to _mewl_ sooner or later.

Of course, in mere seconds he whimpers, pleading for more, pleading for _me_ , and I claim his mouth with a ferocious growl. I force him to open up for me, inviting his tongue to meet mine, and his hands, instead of searching for pain, come to grab my shoulders in bliss.

  
I kiss him deeply, and I kiss him well, so good he quickly starts moaning, his body becoming a sinful beckoning in itself, and as his enveloping warmth almost drives me wild _again_ , I pull apart to look at him. He’s flushed pink, breathless, his hair tousled around my fingers, his eyes alight with boundless love, and though I meant to force him back to reality, I find myself losing my mind instead, grabbing his hand to press it tight against my heart.

“Feel it, Armand.” I pant, making him feel the mad beating there. “Remember it. I am not my mother, and you are not Concini. What happened to Marillac will never happen to you.”

He gasps, surprised, it seems, to be understood so well, and his eyes blur with thankfulness as he gently slides forward until his lips graze my ear.

_“Je vous aime, Louis.”_ He whispers there, and against all the odds, it’s me who ends up biting my fingertips after all.


	3. September the 1st 1632, Town of Castelnaudary, Languedoc.

This battle is a shame.

A filthy, despicable shame.

I know, by now, that it won't even give me a reason to spur my horse. Below my feet into the meadow downhill, the fight has barely started and is already over.

Castelnaudary is a small, barely protected city a few miles north of Toulouse, its buildings tranquil and modest, its mayor rather faithful to the Crown, its lands unimportant if they weren’t crossed by two trade routes. Castelnaudary is the name of a town no one cares about.

And now, the place of a battle about to be too short to be mentioned.

This large barren field beneath the city walls is called La Fite and is peacefully split in two by the local river. On each side of the water, deep ditches have been dug by the city folk to prevent the yearly floods of the temperamental southern streams.

Behind the northern ditch stand Schomberg's and La Force's regiments, their infantry artfully arranged around a core of cavalry, the way Richelieu and I both designed. Each and every man in this perfect alignment of three thousand is keeping his eyes on his General's sword, ready to move at his slightest command, the way all trained soldiers do.

On the southern border, stands the colourful, messy assembly of destitute nobles and disgruntled bourgeois that is all my dear mother has managed to gather to her cause. Barely more than a thousand sparkly armours, and three cannons that could have been frightening if they had been wisely placed. From what my spyglass allows me to see, they're all too busy arguing with each other to even take a look at the powerful army preparing to attack them.

_Unbelievable._

This is not a battlefield, this is a circus game, undeserving of the French soil.

I sigh, dropping the spyglass on my saddle to rub my eyes for a while. Above us, the fiery skies of autumn announce a bright evening to come with orange hues and golden light. The small, timid trees of the South are still reluctant to lose their leaves, holding on to joyful shades of green. A few birds, oblivious to mankind's senseless wars, fly around the city towers, searching for food or shelter.

My horse shivers in impatience, and I pat his solid neck. Next to me, Treville's black mare is just the same, a lively war mount begging to be allowed to run towards the battlefield.

But I'm afraid this one doesn't deserve the mere sound of their hooves.

Before I claim myself bored and ask for wine to be brought, a sharp order is heard on Gaston's side, and both Treville and I take back our spyglasses to watch a loosely organised pack of cavaliers cross the lonely bridge between the two armies.

The miserable lot runs in sheer chaos to collapse against Schomberg's infantry with full force. Gaston's cannons fire four times, all projectiles flying at least ten feet above my soldier's heads to crash into the grass behind them or into the lowest part of the city walls.

“They set their aim too high.” Treville next to me grumbles. “And those cannons aren't even tied to the ground. Look over there, that man has almost been killed by the recoil of his own weapon.”

I only shrug, utterly sickened.

La Force barks a few words, and his infantry moves around Gaston's cavaliers in flawless synchronicity, gripping them in a deadly vice. In mere minutes the whole pack is silenced, may it be by death or defeat. My brother immediately sends another attack, then, slightly bigger but certainly not better planned, that fails just as miserably. 

The _cherished son_ just lost at least two hundred men, didn't win one single yard of land, and now the only bridge he could use to fight this battle is filled with debris, broken bodies and dead horses.

Well, you can't be good at _everything,_ can you, dear brother?

Among what's left of Gaston's men a wind of panic begins to rise, a few cavaliers already breaking ranks in pathetic, scattered escapes. I try and spot my brother in the growing confusion, moving my spyglass around until I recognise his face.

I watch him gesticulate and yell at his servants in sheer inefficiency for a while, and though I'm mortified to know this pompous moron shares my own blood, this is not, in all that mess, what hurts the most.

What hurts the most, what hurts _like hell_ , is the face of that man standing right next to my brother, his battle-worn armour still proud under the autumn sun, his hat adorned by the white feathers my father loved to wear.

What twists my guts with the agony only heartbreak can give, is the face of my old friend, Henri de Montmorency, there among this worthless lot of unskilled traitors.

_Henri, my dear Henri, how did we come to such a waste?_

It all started one year ago, I think, when Richelieu charged a local Languedoc nobleman, Roannez, with treason and counterfeit money.

This commonplace affair was meant to happen without a word from me, the machinery of state needing no other hands than Richelieu’s to _regulate_ itself, but Roannez, terrified, like half of France it seems, of those legends about the Red Beast's torture chambers, decided to beg for his life by spitting out a few secrets of his own.

So instead of being locked up away from my sight in Vincennes for the rest of his inconsequential life, Roannez was brought to me, his hands and feet tied up with chains. He kneeled and sobbed while a Red Guard's sword behind his back forced him to repeat what he had said earlier in his prison cell, and as he spoke my hands clenched hard around my glass of wine.

He certified that my mother was actively searching for allies to overthrow my reign _again_ and that Valençay, a man I thought beyond suspicion, had promised her the lands of Calais in exchange for a good position in her next alliance of power.

I snarled at the endless stream of betrayal my mother kept spreading around her steps like the smell of a rotting corpse. How could I hope to build a strong kingdom for the next century if every man I dared to rely on could change his mind for a sachet of gold?

Furious, I shouted for Valençay to be exiled to the colonies with nothing else than a pair of shirts and his old boots, but as I hissed for Roannez to be dragged outside, the wretched fool claimed he had more to give.

Shaking with anger, I sat back in my chair and half-heartedly nodded for him to go on.

The Red Guard gave his back a sharp push with the tip of his sword, and the weasel quivered in fear, blurting out that among the men my mother had seduced with promises of glories and wealth, was also a Marshal called _Montmorency._

Montmorency.

The sound of that name felt like an arrow through my heart.

Henri, my brother in arms, _my oldest friend._

Feeling the Earth sinking under my feet, struggling to breathe right, I glanced aside at Armand, and in his eyes of anthracite I read a quiet, yet merciless confirmation.

“No.” I breathed, stubborn, imploring. “Not him. Not _Henri_.”

But my beast regretfully lowered his eyes, and with a few sentences about letters and notes his informants had been intercepting for some time, he made any denial pointless.

“I didn't want to alarm you until my doubts were verified.” He muttered.

  
  
Devastated, I let out a cry of raw pain.

I got up, knocking my chair over in the process, and stormed to the windows to hide the tears threatening the corners of my eyes.

“Have Montmorency arrested, stripped from everything he owns and dragged to the Bastille to rot!” I ended up growling, my soaked eyes fixed on the Louvre's gardens.

But instead of obedient words and salutations, I heard behind my back Richelieu quietly ordering Roannez to be ushered away, and as the door closed upon the prisoner's shouts of protest, I felt delicate hands brushing along my back. Lost in my agony, prisoner of my old anger once more, I shrugged him away, hissing for him to leave me alone, wanting _anything but that_ , yet unable – as always - to voice my thoughts.

Infallibly docile, his touch left me, and I heard him retreating a few steps towards the door. Enraged by my own inaptitude just as much as by Henri's betrayal I couldn't even turn around to look at him.

“I will carry out your order concerning Valençay.” I heard him plead in the softest voice he could muster. “But concerning Montmorency, I beg you, just give me one more week.”

I think I frowned, but I still nodded, my instinctive trust in him winning over my grief, and he exited the room without any more word.

The second I was alone, I wailed in agony and broke everything within my reach until the skin of my fists was torn open and bleeding. Though I left bloodstains everywhere I went that day, no one dared to approach me, even with a handkerchief.

I never knew what exactly Armand tried to accomplish during this week, but I know he disappeared for a few days, and when he came back, the name of Montmorency wasn't even whispered in my presence anymore. I kept asking Armand for Henri's arrest at first, but my beast always dodged the subject, drawing my attention to more pressing matters instead, including sometimes, by letting his clothes fall on the floor.

Gradually, as time went by, I began to consider sparing Montmorency's life if he kept a low profile and caused me no further harm. This was, after all, the accusation of a trapped man and a few ambiguous letters against the honest smile of my childhood friend.

Somehow, I always cling to hope. Somehow _, I never seem to learn._

This undecided mess lasted until last July, as my failure at being adequately _firm_ with dishonesty caught upon me, of course, what did I expect?

It was one of those nights where I came to Armand’s study at night to find him too upset to let me even kiss his mouth. One of those nights where instead of sweet talking and low moans, he pulls a few notes out of his sleeves, the kind of notes that need to be discussed with me.

The either very good, _or terrible news._

That night, passing anxious fingers along the lines of codes, my beast muttered that his spies had spotted Gaston on French land again. After months of begging around for a friendly acre of land to gather his troops upon, my brother had apparently found shelter for his battalion of traitors. In Montmorency's own domain of Pézenas, in the middle of Languedoc.

I remember I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, cursing Henri for being so _determined_ to abandon me.

  
I was ready to _forget_ , for God's sake, if not ready to forgive.

Now I had no choice but to run South to fight and kill my dear old friend.

_I was tired of being forced to hurt those I once loved._

I was softly pulled out of my bitterness by Armand's deft hands stroking my cheek, and I opened my eyes to the sound of his voice breathing his devotion to the skin of my temple. I vaguely thought that if I had seen the lifeless shadow he could crumble into without my support, the picture of what would happen to _me_ , deprived of his loyalty, wasn't a better perspective at all.

I made up a pathetic smile, urging him to go on, and he dropped a furtive kiss into my hair before he unrolled a map of Southern France upon his desk.

“The forces Monsieur has gathered are far below his hopes.” He explained. “Toulouse and her five regiments remain loyal to your Crown. Since Your Majesty is dearly loved by the people, they massively refuse to follow Monsieur's uprising, and even Huguenots denied all his requests for help, finding Your Majesty's reign more merciful than the one Marie de Medici promises to have. Still, a thousand men are gathering in Pézenas as we speak, with artillery and muskets, and this threat cannot be reasonably ignored.”

There was no choice, no choice at all.

I had given Henri almost a year, and I didn't even ask for an apology.

  
Just for him to cause me no further harm.

_But it is obviously too hard, too unrewarding to be ever faithful to me._

  
Stricken, ravaged by pain, I summoned a war council the next morning and ordered for a mighty riposte. Schomberg and La Force, stationed near Lyon, crossed the borders of Languedoc with three regiments long before Treville, Armand and I ever passed Dijon. When I learned that the clash was likely to happen in Castelnaudary, my troops and Gaston's had already settled there on the meadow called La Fite and had been staring stonily at each other for days.

I arrived just in time to witness the grotesque disaster this battle was doomed to be.

“Do you have orders for General Schomberg, Your Majesty?” Treville asks, yanking me out of my melancholy.

I shake my head.

“Schomberg fought in La Rochelle, Suse, and Montauban,” I grumble. “I won't insult him by telling him how to handle a handful of fops in feathery hats.”

Treville hides a snort beneath a cough, and bows briefly.

Around us, his Musketeers form a quiet, orderly circle, protecting me from a danger that is unlikely to ever touch my cloak. His watching over me is hardly necessary, but as I am forced to witness my childhood friend standing there among my enemies, I still feel grateful for the Captain's ever-loyal presence.

Gaston's forces have been shuffling around in chaotic, unreadable moves for half an hour now, and Schomberg seems to be losing patience. He's talking to his staff, pointing at the ditches, and if I know him well enough, he's surely thinking about aligning muskets along the river and shooting those idiots out of their idleness.

But before my soldiers set their plan in motion, Treville grabs my arm and points at the front rows of my brother's troops for me. I shift my spyglass to the right and gasp in shock.

Montmorency is on his horse, followed by a hundred cavaliers no more, and since the only bridge above the river is still blocked by dead animals and soldiers in disarray, he's riding straight towards the ditch.

“What the...?” I mutter.

I see his white feathers flapping under the orange skies as he unsheathes his sword and rushes at the left flank of my army, alone with a hundred souls against three thousand armed men. Schomberg, who's never stunned for long, is already yelling orders to his infantry, and musket fire immediately sends deadly sparks of fire towards Henri.

Five, ten, twenty of his men fall like rag dolls into the ditch, and twenty more don't even make it past the river. Montmorency is hurt, in his legs and stomach I believe, but still rides on, his sword held high, uncaring about who dies or who follows. He throws himself at my troops, shouting loud, almost offering his heart to the muskets' thickening storm.

“This... This is - ...” I stammer.

“... -suicide, yes.” Treville rasps.

_Dear God, Henri._

With a strangled cry, I clap my spyglass shut and hand it over to the Captain. I join my hands on my saddle, then, and avert my eyes, biting my lips in despair. I hear distant clangs and gunfire, I hear strident howls of pain, I hear the last whinny of dying horses, and at some point I close my eyelids tight to chase away memories of Henri and I running around the Louvre's gardens, re-enacting in our own ways the holy wars of Saint Louis against the evil forces of the Hapsburgs.

“Lion!” He used to laugh at my roars of fury as we fought and rolled upon the sand alleys.

“You’re a lion trapped in a boy’s shirt!”

Henri, my brother in arms, my father's grandson. More of a brother than Gaston has ever been. Where is it now, the wealth my mother promised, as you ride to your death on this pitiful ditch?

  
Did it bring you more happiness than loyalty would have?

_Was it so hard, so unrewarding to be ever faithful to me?_

The racket doesn't last.

Ten minutes no more, and silence claims the empty field they called La Fite again.

I still refuse to look up.

At some point, I hear Treville clearing his throat, his mare stomping in eagerness. The brave Captain tries a few unstitched words before he manages to utter, “Monsieur is sounding the retreat, Your Majesty. Should he be pursued?”

“ ** _Yes._** ” I hiss between clenched teeth, my head still low, my eyes still closed. “Run behind him and do not stop until the Pyrenees. Push him back into Spain for all I care but push this ungrateful prick out of my sight once and for all.”

Treville, I guess, turns around to repeat the order for his men, who dart away without question.

I still refuse to look up.

More silence, barely disturbed by the decaying havoc below, until the Captain lets out a muffled curse, brushes my sleeve again and speaks in a strained voice.

“Your Majesty, the Duke of Montmorency is still alive.”

With that, my eyes snap open, and I _do_ look up.

Gaston, I think, is already out of sight, hunted away by Treville's musketeers.

  
La Force and his regiment are moving towards the retreating troops of my brother, making prisoners of most and pursuing the rest on horseback, while Schomberg's men are quietly cleaning up the field, separating the dead and the wounded out of the bloodied remains of the three failed assaults.

I snap for my spyglass and search among the heaps of bodies until I catch a glimpse of Henri's armour as he's carried by three of my soldiers towards the surgeon's tent. 

His white feathered hat is gone, and his coat is tainted with blood. I see two nasty gashes on his legs, at least one blow on his skull, and he is barely moving.

I could order for him to be left on the ground to die instead. That's obviously what he wanted. He's a dead man, no matter what. He either dies here or later on, upon the gallows. He's a dead man, no matter what, and I suppose he must know it.

_Henri, my dear Henri, how did we come to such a waste?_

'Lion!' he used to call me, ruffling my hair to make it look more like a mane.

I lower my spyglass and pass a worried hand upon my mouth.

Treville frowns in concern, awaiting my orders, but between my rage wanting Henri dead, and the memory of his laughter, my confused heart is torn apart. So, eventually, I do what I always end up doing, and I turn around on my horse to look for Armand.

He’s there, sitting on that chair he pushed in front of our military tent, wrapped in a heavy red cloak and a regular soldier’s woollen blanket, the Musketeer d'Aramitz on his right with his own spyglass having told him everything of the battle, I'm sure.

A nasty fever struck him four days ago, on our way to Languedoc, stealing his breath and most of his strength in dry, dreadful fits of coughs. As he lay in his camp bed both shivering and burning up, I begged him to return to Paris at once, but he refused to leave me, and rode on to Castelnaudary by willpower and resolve alone.

He didn’t want me to face on my own, I suppose, the sight of Henri dying or defeated in the most dishonourable of battles.

As our eyes meet, of course, he understands. His exhausted face warms up with compassion, and he painfully stands, gathering his cloak around his shoulders.

D'Aramitz offers his arm as support, but the Red Beast refuses, walking slowly, yet steadily towards my horse. He steps to my level, pale as a sheet but holding on, his red-rimmed eyes speaking of trust and affection, so loud and clear they don't need words. So instead of long sentences, he simply lays a soothing hand upon my horse's back, three inches from my thigh, and gracefully points at the meadow.

“Talk to him, Your Majesty.” He suggests, humble. “Then you'll know what needs to be done.”

I blink once, twice, my eyes flying from Armand to the battlefield and back, but what's the use, it's my Armand, _he always knows._ I catch Treville's gaze and nod towards La Fite.

“Bring him to me,” I command, and the Captain spurs his horse at once.

Twenty minutes later, Montmorency is carried uphill on a stretcher by two sturdy infantrymen, flanked by Treville and Schomberg on their horses, their hands tight around their swords.

I wait, jaws clenched, until Henri is presented to my right, and look down at his broken, battered body. It's worse than I thought. I count a dozen wounds, maybe more, half of them likely to leave permanent marks. A thigh so deeply cut he'll be limping. An eye so badly hit it might never open again. God, three bullet holes in his armour.

Henri, my oldest friend.

_Was it so hard, so unrewarding?_

His eyes are closed, but he's not unconscious. I hear faint moans of pain exhaled from his throat, and his hands twitch blindly on his chest.

“Pay respects to your King!” Schomberg thunders, kicking the stretcher to wake him up.

Henri's remaining eye blinks open, then, and he painfully looks up, squinting against the evening sun to search for my face. When he finds me, he only has a pensive smile, vaguely gesturing around my head.

“A lion.” He just says, and I know he remembers too.

I feel tears burning my eyes, and there is a child in me wanting to jump off this horse, take care of his friend and run to the woods with him again, hunting the smell of carelessness carried by those long-gone days we once shared.

There is a man in me, a friend, craving to grab this bloodstained hand in mine, and promise Henri another sparring game.

There is a brother in me, a son, exhausted to be unloved, ready to forget, ready to forgive, just for a blessed moment of joy with my father's favourite godson.

But as I hear beside me the soft rustling of red silk upon the evening wind, I know there is no child, no man, no friend left alive today upon that hill. There's only the King of France, with only one thing to do, only one question to ask.

“Why?” I spit to Henri's wounded face.

His features crumble, then, and he lowers his eyes to meet those of Armand behind me, perhaps.

“I have no excuse.” He whispers.

And may it be because of shame or exhaustion; he doesn't lift his head back up.

_He gives me nothing more._

A sob I don't want to let out is choking my very breath, and I grip my reins so tight it hurts. I give Henri a few seconds to look at me, explain himself, _plead for his skin_. But no matter how long I wait, he doesn't move an inch. 

I am no son, no brother, no friend, no man.

Only the last of the Bourbons, a law for every move, a rule for every breath.

Only the King of France, with only one thing to do, only one thing to say.

“Take him to a physician.” I hiss, waving him away with a flicker of my hand. “I want him standing on his feet for his trial, and kept in one piece until I have his head cut down.”

And as he's rushed out of my sight, I stand alone upon my hill, my horse rumbling in quiet worry.

I keep my eyes on the darkening skyline of Castelnaudary for as long as it takes for me to swallow my tears, listening to the white noise of the soldiers below, and the last whistles of the birds before they hide away to sleep.

At some point, under the black veil of night time, my hand slides backwards, just three inches behind my thigh, because I know there are soft, slender fingers waiting for me there, and I need the only thing I cannot doubt about.

I feel my hand wrapped in feverish warmth and my knuckles kissed gently, one by one, by tender lips.

Only then I feel ready, perhaps, to face the darkest of my duties.


	4. October 29th 1632, Treasure Tower, La Bastille, Paris

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional warnings : execution (beheading), smut (handjob)

Every cell in the Bastille looks the same.

They're all four square meters of cold damp stone, covered with hay and yellow dust. They're all dark and repulsive, always lonely, however invaded by endless echoes of footsteps they seem to be. They're all desolate scraps of space where hope is neatly hung under the timid light of a narrow slit into the wall.

All of them, except three, on the upper floor of the Treasure Tower.

They called it the Treasure Tower because before the Dictator of Shadows turned the Bastille into a prison for those who refuse to obey his new set of laws, there used to be gold up there. My father once stored fifteen millions of livres in this ancient castle, of which I never saw a single sou.

My mother, in her eight years of full Regency, from the day Henri IV died to the day I sent her away to Blois for the first time, spent every single one of those golden coins in bribes, gowns, food and pointless celebrations. When I declared myself a proper King, at last, there wasn't a scrap of it left to raise an army or give Paris a better sewer network, thank you very much, dearest Mother.

The three Treasure cells are different.

They're wider, heated by small hearths and lit by decent, though barred, windows. The furniture inside is comfy, elegant, and even if the bed is nailed to the floor, the sheets there are kept clean. There is a desk, a dinner table, a few chairs and tall wooden shelves to stack the Tower guests' last remaining possessions.

Richelieu's cold machinery of state, crushing everyone standing in its way, makes no difference between nobility and common folk anymore those days, and the Bastille is bound to have rooms meant for the highest born of prisoners.

Like, for example, Henri II de Montmorency.

I climb up the narrow stairs, escorted by a dozen Bastille Guards, who have unlocked no less than seven doors for me before I saw the last corridor to Henri's cell.

The air is cleaner up here, free from the damp, rancid smell of fungus ruling over the regular cells of the ground floor. The walls are dry, and those ancient limestones left filthy and rough below, are carved into smooth order here, a few discrete flower figures emphasizing every doorframe.

As I am led to Henri's door, I nod my thanks to the Guards, but when they form a tight circle around it, I order them to step back. Henri asked for privacy, and I am a man of my word.

Montmorency, properly healed by my own physicians, has been brought from the disaster of Castelnaudary to Paris to be locked up, and up until the last twenty agonising days of his trial, half of France has been parading in my reception room to beg for my mercy.

The town of Toulouse, his stronghold, sent a delegation of nine diplomats to present me with a full review of Henri's past glories and good deeds as if I remembered none of them. I was there for most of those victories, for God's sake, I know how brave a soldier he was.

Condé rode up to Paris especially for an audience, listing all the good things the Montmorency's bloodline had brought to Languedoc, and how close a relationship this family held with the Grands of the South, _**ha!** How surprising_. As if I didn't know why this man had been made my father's godson in the first place, his bedroom three doors from mine in the Louvre from the day I was born up to my twentieth birthday.

We received a letter from the Pope, brought by Mazarini himself, pleading for Henri's life using the same arguments, only loosely wrapped in biblical references.

Anne, who never cared about anything that happened to me, went out of her routine to beg for Henri's life in my own chambers, joining her hands under her fattening chin to appeal to my bloody sentiment. “Your Majesty,” she cried, “he is your friend.”

And if this torture wasn't enough, yesterday night old d'Epernon took the floor during a game of cards with La Vieuxville and Schomberg. I was fine with the scrawny goat enumerating Henri's qualities again, but the idiot found it fit to compare them to each and every scrap of Armand's _reputation_.

His speech was nothing more than a dusty echo of what the Courtier's whispers used to be ten years ago, warning me about the tainted priest's ambition, spitting on the corrupt beast's lies. The cunning Cardinal, his thirst for power, his devouring lust for wealth. Richelieu, a foot in every salon, an eye in every room. The Red Spider, an agent in each province, a spy in every household, and there has been a time when I could have let this kind of filth to be spoken at my own game table, but I realised yesterday that everything had changed.

“Dare to speak about my Minister like that one more time, d'Epernon,” I hissed over my hand of cards, “and you'll be forced to flee North to Amsterdam before you find an acre of land that doesn't want you dead.”

I have never seen so many heads lowered at the same time.

I still threw my cards on the table and yelled them all out of the room.

I didn't need to be advised, reminded, persuaded or even warned.

The man, the child, the friend in me, they all knew exactly who Henri de Montmorency was.

But it was only for the King to decide. A King with only one thing to do _, only one thing to say._

I kept my eyes cold, and my fists clenched all evening, but at night, as I ran through the undergrounds to the Palais Cardinal, I felt my throat constricted by restrained tears all over again. I slid the hidden door behind my back panting, eyes blurred and guts knotted. I blew off my lantern and leant against the wall, whining in pain, unable to speak.

But Armand, of course, he knew.

_My Armand, he always knows._

My eyes fixed on the windy, howling October night through his tall windows, I felt him step near, slip a glass of wine into my hands, and kiss my brow in humble comfort. I breathed in the scent of him again, the one that lingered in his silver hair, and looked for strength in the resolve of his words.

“Tell me one more time, Armand,” I asked, “why I should kill my friend tomorrow.”

And my beast adjusted the collar of my shirt, repeating for me what I made him say a thousand times already since the battle of Castelnaudary.

“This is a matter beyond a single man's feelings and emotions, Your Majesty.” He tenderly whispered against my cheek. “This is a matter of State, and the State is bigger than both of us. Montmorency signed a pact with the enemy, brewed an uprising in the very Province you entrusted him with, and confronted your armies in battle. If you let him live, he will become your mother's next figurehead in her continuous endeavour to overthrow your reign, his panache as a soldier making him much more of an ideal leader for her troops than Gaston will ever be.”

I closed my eyes, I think, trying to get a grip on the Reason of State once more, and not to put it into balance with the tortured howls of my own heart.

This is the only way to make my dream come true. This is how you build a vision.

This is the price to pay for France to be turned into the strongest force of the continent.

I have to turn the loose, flexible traditions of my forefathers into solid, unbending laws. I have to be the King who executes even his dearest friends if they threaten the unity of State.

France needs a brand new kind of reign.

_I need to be a brand new King._

I nodded, inhaling deep, and Armand laid a soft kiss on the corner of my lips, retreating to his desk to let me compose myself. Silence settled between us while I drowned half of my glass of Bordeaux, watching dead leaves being hurled against the window planes by the tempest before I found the strength to stand up and move forward.

As he shuffled through his papers, I paced through his study, brushing my fingertips over the heaps of artworks he had stored there. I stopped, distracted, in front of an Aphrodite bust standing upon its own wooden box, about to be shipped to Saint Germain en Laye it seemed.

The soft white face stared back at me, blank and distant, unreal in its marble perfection.

I didn't like it the slightest and fought the urge to smash it to pieces with one punch.

I resolutely laid down my empty glass on top of the statue's head instead, showing all the purpose this inexpressive object could ever have to me. But in the same heartbeat, I heard a stern cough behind my back and took back my glass with a thwarted sigh. Spinning around, I glanced at Armand and saw him peeking at me over the rim of a letter, his reproachful face softened by obedience. He was expecting a smile, I knew, and amused despite myself, I granted him half a grin.

He seemed to consider me composed enough, then, because he elegantly put the letter on his desk, the written side facing me, and pushed it forward.

“I have received this today in the late afternoon.” He explained as I walked towards the paper. “It's from Montmorency's own hand.”

I stopped dead in my steps, halfway to his desk.

“What does he want?” I let out, terrified to see my fragile resolve swayed once more, but Armand just lifted his open palms.

“He's not pleading for his case.” He reassured me, his tone careful. “Unlike a lot of people, it seems, he is quite ready to welcome his fate.”

It didn't make me feel any better, but I still walked on, closing the distance between me and my old friend's handwriting. I passed my fingers on the letter, but instead of reading it, I just looked up at the Red Beast, raising my eyebrows in question.

“He's asking a last favour from his King,” Armand said, “as per tradition since he is still Admiral of the Royal fleet.”

I narrowed my eyes, doing my best to control the unease in my voice as I asked,

“Which is?”

“To see you once more tomorrow afternoon before his time comes.” My Beast replies, his fingertips moving towards his heart on their own will. “Just for a talk, as he claims. For old time's sake.”

I didn't say a word.

I stared at some detail of an open book on his desk instead, seeing without comprehending the meticulous tables of treasury accounts he aligned there. After a while I just laid my glass on the letter, to pin it where it was and suspend any discussion about it.

Then, I turned around and strode to his bedroom.

I felt his eyes following me, but I didn't beckon him in. He didn't sound upset at all, resuming his paperwork without further worry. It had started to become usual, it's true. After months of being incapable of entering his chambers without ravishing him at least twice, my hunger quieted down into something more sustainable in the long term.

More domestic, perhaps. I don't know.

His bed is better than mine, and sometimes, I just want to sleep, that's all.

I shrugged off my dressing gown, pulled my shoes away and slid into his sheets with a tired groan. I had left the door open, and while I slumped in his cushions, wrapped into his softest counterpane and that thick cover in rabbit fur he uses in wintertime, I kept a lazy eye over the graceful moves of his hands as he sorted through his documents before the night.

There was a whirlwind of doubts in my mind, none of them clear enough to be spoken out loud.

There were voices of regret, of guilt, of anger, and sorrow.

Each of them too confused to be heard above the rest.

I couldn’t find, in the mess of agony my head had become, one single loose thread to start untangling my thoughts, so I lay there torn apart by heartbreak and duty, watching the waves of red silk hiss upon the parquet floor. I have wanted to call him closer at some point, but I thought I'd close my eyes a little first.

_And I woke up six hours later._

I stirred peacefully at first, blinking at the morning sun peeking through the yellow glass of his bedroom windows. Armand was there, curled against me with an inch of my nightgown gripped in his fingers as always, and the silhouette of Notre-Dame outside seemed to welcome the break of dawn with graceful cheer.

A thoughtless smile grew upon my lips.

Then I remembered exactly what day we were, and that smile died before it bloomed.

Henri's execution was scheduled at seven in the evening.

_Tell me one more time, Armand, why I should kill my friend today._

The inner storm of torture washed over my guts at once, squeezing my chest between a carnival of begging faces and the price of France’s future. I tensed, gasping for air, and my Beast next to me immediately jumped awake.

His brilliant mind was a lot faster than mine, though, to recall the program of the day. Still blurred by sleep, his eyes were already filled with sympathy as they met mine. He let go of my nightgown to wrap his fingers around my hand and lift it to his lips, but this soft spark of warmth wasn't anywhere near enough to soothe my torment.

So I grabbed a handful of his hair and pulled him towards me, claiming his mouth deep, grunting my satisfaction as he docilely opened wide. He pressed himself against me, and as our tongues brushed together, he let out that kind of raspy moan I liked a lot.

Naturally then, before I pulled apart, I clenched his wrist in a firm grip and led his hand down to my groin.

“Make it quick.” I heaved against his lips, and he only nodded.

He worked his magic in mere minutes, the shape and laws of my skin being one of his areas of expertise by now, and I cried out in bliss against his shoulder, eyes squeezed shut, as his deft fingers undid me in quick, yet calculated strokes.

He left me sprawled on the mattress, shuddering, out of breath, to get up and step to that basin of warm water he always keeps on that monstrous stove. I barely managed to open my eyelids as he slid back next to me. It seems he had missed one spot when he washed his hand, because as my vision cleared he was licking his fingers spotless in a vicious, languid circle of his tongue, and I let out a pitiful moan.

He looked down at me with mischievous embers of anthracite, and though everything in his stance never fails to speak of obedience, I wondered, as I do more and more often these days, who exactly is playing who in those sinful duels of ours.

But no matter how, wretched demon, divine creature, he had dulled the pain of my turmoil into a distant, sated blur for a while, and I felt ever thankful for that.

I glanced at Armand's desk through the door still ajar and spotted my empty wine glass, unmoved upon this letter since the evening before. In the fleeting peace pleasure had granted me, I felt one picture shining brighter through my mud pool of memories.

The careless smile of my old friend, as we ran through the corridors of the Louvre with fresh beignets stolen from the kitchens.

I knew, then, that I wanted to accept Henri’s last request. I wanted to see him one more time, even if it would only make the last fall of the executioner’s blade a bit harder to witness.

After all, I was already in agony.

“How much worse could it be?” I blurted out loud without thinking.

With that, upon an unreadable smile, Armand slid out of bed again, this time to fetch my dressing gown and shoes. As I stood to put them on, he gently brushed my hair behind my ears and tiptoed to his study to light my lantern for my walk back to the Palace.

Handing it over to me, tall and pale in his long nightshirt of grey silk, he looked like those marble statues of his, in graceful drapery and milky skin, the only one I would actually buy.

“I will make arrangements for Your Majesty to meet the prisoner for a few hours this afternoon.” He offered, serene.

I took the lantern and slid the wall panel aside, frowning under the returning weight of my own doubt.

“You don’t think I’m making a mistake?” I asked under my breath.

My beast just shook his head, his ardent eyes steady and confident, much more, I think, than I felt by then.

“The State requires this man to be beheaded tonight at seven.” He said as he stepped back to his desk. “What happens until then depends on nothing else than what lies inside your heart.”

The secret door clicked shut, and I was left in the dark, the humble flame he provided as the only guide for my steps.

***  
  
  
  


“Your Majesty,” one of the Bastille Guard objects, “we must ensure your safety! This man-”

“If this man ever wanted to kill me,” I hiss, “he had a whole lifetime to do it.”

But with a sigh, I still take off my hat, baldric and sword to drop them into his arms.

“See?” I grunt. “I am unarmed, and I am sure the man inside this cell doesn’t even have a fork to stab me with. Now let me in, close the door, and stay five steps away from it until seven sharp. No argument.”

After a few seconds of hesitation and shared glances, a murmur of obedience runs among the dozen guards, and their lieutenant pulls out a thick bunch of keys to open the six intricate locks of the cell’s door. I breathe in and exhale shakily as I rub my nose in apprehension.

The door slides open. I step in the way I always do towards difficult things. I stride forward. I march to war.

The cell is indeed wide and tall, ten square yards at least, its whitewash-coated walls painted in pleasant beige. On every surface, at a man's level or below, drawings and paintings have been scattered. Names, faces, dates, prayers or angry words, all of them blurred in a vague cloud of black and brown, like a register of souls that passed in here, put on display as a memento, or perhaps, as a warning.

The bed has been nailed against the wall facing the door, comfortably isolated from the cold by a small wooden platform, and girded by curtains as decent cots are supposed to be. Around it, a table, two chairs and a toilet basin have been placed, all of them survivors of the past century no doubt, but still giving this melancholic alcove a merciful, homely feeling.

It could almost look like one of those relay inn rooms you can find around the bay of Somme if the window wasn't so high and crossed by the thickest of iron bars.

On the cold, stone floor, a worn-out rug has been thrown, and in the ancient armchair pushed there, sits Henri de Montmorency.

It's half past four, and in less than three hours, my oldest friend will be dead by my own hand.

As Henri looks up, stunned, shutting the book he was reading with a gasp of surprise, two guards enter the cell and perform a thorough search, lifting up sheets, opening drawers, looking for weapons, or anything that could be used as one. They step outside taking away a few pokers and strings, the letter opener and even a small stool.

They bow for me one last time, repeat, more for Henri than myself, that they won't be far, and close the door behind their backs.

I am left alone in that small universe of beige and brown, facing all that’s left of my childhood.

“Your Majesty.” Henri exhales, almost shaking. “I didn't think you'd come.”

They obviously let him in with a few of his possessions, since he's wearing his regular military shirt and doublet, his ammunition boots traded for comfortable indoor shoes. His left leg is leniently resting on a leather cushion, no doubt because of the Castelnaudary wounds. He got to keep both his eyes in the end it seems, but one of them is pushed half-closed by an ugly scar below. They shaved off a whole patch of his hair to take care of that horrid cut he had on the side of his skull, and though it's all cleverly hidden under what remains of his blonde curls, it still looks painful to me.

He stands in a wince, guiding his left leg into motion with his both hands around his thigh, and limps laboriously to the only shelf of the room.

“Please, Your Majesty, sit down.” He invites, pulling an elegant bottle of wine out of a delivery basket. “This morning I have received some fine Bourgogne, courtesy of your Minister du Plessis Richelieu, from his freshly-appointed lands of Cluny. I didn't quite understand how the Cardinal could think me worthy of such a gift, but now you're here, I guess I can figure out what he had in mind.”

And he smiles, the bastard, he smiles, three hours from death, wiping two plain glasses clean with a fresh cloth and laying them both on the dinner table between us.

My jaws clench so hard it hurts, and if I don't avert my eyes, I might just break his other leg.

Come on, calm down.

_Breathe in, breathe out, focus._

“You're furious.” Henri states, saddened but not overly surprised. “You've always been so.”

He pushes one of his chairs towards me, and sits on the other with a groan of pain, popping the Bourgogne open and filling the two glasses.

“I remember you've always been a fierce and dreadful opponent.” He whispers, dreamy, pushing the bottle aside and closing his hands around his cup. “I'm lucky we only ever fought for play, or I wouldn't have been blessed with such a long life.”

He laughs, then, and my frail composure breaks. I let out a violent growl, banging my both fists on the table, my eyes piercing holes in his despite a blur of wrath.

“You took **arms** against me, Henri! ” I spit at his face. “We’re not playing games anymore.”

“Exactly!” He jokes, calmly gesturing at the walls around us. “And see where it has led me.”

I stare for a while, disconcerted, at a soldier of France with nothing left to lose, and I realise my anger has already done its work. It has signed his death sentence.

Once more, I find myself in a place where there's no use for fury anymore.

“Sit down, Lion, please.” He softly pleads again. “Share this wine with me, isn't it why you're here?”

I let myself fall on the chair, still boiling in rage, my throat choked by too many emotions again.

“I'm here to give you a last chance to explain yourself.” I croak, my nails distractedly scraping the plain, damaged wood of the table.

Henri exhales a bitter sigh, his eyes lost in the delicate ruby red hues of the Cluny wine.

“I told you already, Lion.” He says. “None of my reasons would make any sense to you. I made a mistake. I was weak.”

I lean towards him, slow, accusing, unable to let go of this useless threat in my voice.

“You were the bravest officer of my armies in Montpellier, in Saint Jean. You have been many things, Henri, but never _weak_. We believed in something, back in those days, something worth dying for, and I cannot tolerate the thought of you betraying everything we were because my mother waved a gold pouch under your nose.”

He guffaws, then, his eyes rolling to the ceiling, and leaving his glass untouched, he raises his hands in the air in a strained, yet cheerful move.

“Oh, I couldn't care less for the Medici's gold,” he explains. “What made me so weak has never been in Brussels, you know. It was at home. Do you remember my dear Felicia?”

I blink a few times, trying to recall the face of that young Italian girl he met at one of the diplomatic balls my mother organised in preparation for my own wedding. She is, I think, the youngest daughter of one of Mother's Florentian friends. She could barely speak French, that's all I can gather, her face remaining blurred among all those of the Italian ladies the Louvre was constantly swarming with at the time.

“Vaguely.” I shrug, but Henri doesn't even notice.

His eyes are lost somewhere over my shoulder, his thoughts drifting far, so far away from me, I feel almost vexed.

“How beautiful she was, Lion. How proud, how wild, like only those women of the South can be. She has been a challenge to tame and seduce, much harder, now I think about it, than the battles of Montpellier. When I married her, she was all about my bravery, my wartime glories, so honoured to marry the best officer of France, Henri the Fourth's own godson.”

I harshly slump back in my chair, exasperated, flustered, my fingers clenching and unclenching on that table before I understand why I find Henri's enamoured smile deeply irritating. It reminds me too much of my own, this very morning, as I woke up _in a Cardinal's bed._

I drop my stare to the floor between my boots, my growing unease fortunately still unnoticed.

“But as time went by,” Henri adds, lost in his own past, “you know how women are, she grew used to my loyalty, my good deeds. She started to expect more. I was a Duke, yes, but why not a Marshal? I was an Admiral, very well, but why not Constable? For years I tried to explain how your trust and friendship were more valuable than titles or wealth, but she's Florentian, you know, and the nobility born and raised there know only one way to determine a man's worth.”

Ha. I know that all too well.

It has been the one lesson my mother hadn’t failed to teach me.

“Gold,” I whisper, my eyes fixed on the floor somehow softened, I suppose.

“Yes.” My old friend sighs. “The day Richelieu took away my admiralty has been the start of purgatory in my own house. Felicia didn't let a single day pass without endless laments over the failure I had become to her eyes. It was torture to me. I loved her with all my heart, all of it, I swear, and it didn't seem to be enough at all.”

His memories becoming audibly painful, he clears his throat in a shy request, and I feel his bright grey eyes searching for mine. I look up and give out a noncommittal grunt.

He takes it as encouragement, I guess, because his cheerful smile comes back to his lips, and he gestures to the peaceful line of Paris' rooftops through his cell's window.

“You know, the truth is I've been at home too often.” He chuckles in fake carelessness. “Everything was clearer at war, fighting next to you. As you drank with me to the victories of France, I knew I was nowhere else than at my rightful place.”

Don't I know this feeling.

A sentence of my own words, _a man of my own heart._

I hide the surge of fondness washing over my heart by straightening my back and erase the hint of a smile by passing a quick hand over my mouth, but Henri's face only sinks back in raw torment as he joins his fingertips around his glass once more. He still doesn't take a sip but makes the scratched glass spin around instead until the dark red wine catches the timid afternoon light.

“But every night I spent in that woman's bed made me more helpless and confused.” He says, his voice broken by shame.

My stomach turns cold.

I hate the fact that this, too, I understand. May it be from a wife or a mother, I know how far a man can go to earn the love of the ungrateful. A sentence of my own words, a man of my own heart.

I knew coming here would only make it harder.

_‘It depends on nothing else than what lies inside your heart.’_

Dear God, I would give anything not to be King, today.

“When you called me to your rescue that day in Pierre Encise,” Henri goes on, “I thought it would be sufficient evidence of the place I held in your heart, even to her Florentian standards. But as I came back in Languedoc after Marie de Medici's exile, she only noticed my service hadn't been rewarded by title or lands, while Richelieu had been made Duke and pair de France.”

I wince, biting my lips in a nervous twitch, desperately trying to remember Montmorency's face in the Reception room the day I read that letter out loud. But too focused on repairing the wrong done to Armand, I barely looked at anyone except my mother.

Lost in the pained frenzy of my deliverance, in the dazed joy of my happiness, I let Henri ride back to Languedoc unthanked. I failed to reward the friend who came to my help, and I wonder in rising panic how many other good soldiers of France I have neglected so.

“I, too, was jealous, I must confess,” he whispers, “as half of the Louvre surely was, but when Felicia told me that day she had been writing to the Medici for months, I should have stopped her, God I should have. I was weak, Lion, because I am not half the man you are.”

Before I know it, I get up and start pacing around the cell, a closed fist against my mouth, desperate to hide my ragged breathing.

Bloody idiot he is, why didn't he tell me anything?

_Forgetful fool I am, why have I been so blind?_

I could have prevented it. I could have spared us all this shame, this disaster, by naming him Constable that day, or anything of the sort. I should have known who he married. I should have talked to him some more. Henri is about to die, and I have I ruined everything.

While I grab a pillar of his bed to stop myself from trembling, he moron goes on, oblivious to my guilt, carried away by his own remorse, his voice fervent and filled with tears.

“Yes, I should have! I should have had your courage, Lion, you who cast your own mother away to favour your kingdom and your duties.”

_Oh, for God's sake, Henri, shut up._

_You have no idea._

“But I didn't.” He just cries, his hands gripping his glass tight, his wet eyes fixed upon the chair I just left. “I love Felicia, I love her with every inch of my soul, and the prospect of losing her affection made me miserable and cowardly. I was confused, I was jealous. I needed my wife, I hated Richelieu, and since Medici promised no harm would be done to you or your reign, in my turmoil I made an oath. I signed her pact.”

I don't move an inch, focused on breathing in and out, watching the way the woollen borders of the deep green curtains around his bed are slowly decaying, crumbling away in delicate threads of a lighter shade.

“I knew,” I hear Henri lament, “the moment I signed, that this pact would lead me right here, but after all, without Felicia's love, I was already a dead man.”

My first instinct is to roll my eyes at the futile romanticism of French nobility, but truly, do I have the right to? Do I?

Henri pauses in his speech, and I think I hear a muffled sob. I glance over his shoulder to see him wiping the corner of his eyes with his sleeve, and I measure in silence the unforgivable amount of time I've spent completely unaware of love as one of the deepest forces that moved men and women upon the surface of this Earth.

I only knew anger, revenge and spite.

I only believed in duty, justice and honour.

All my life, all my life without a clue.

_I guess I was the dull King._

I swallow my torment and take the three steps that separate me from Henri, and as I pass behind his back, I pat his shoulder once. He lifts a shimmering, hopeful stare towards me, but I give him nothing more, pacing further to the door to pass my fingertips upon the heavy iron hinges nailed into the thick ancient wood.

Though I feel like everything is said and done, after a while, he speaks some more, and I'm almost surprised to hear his voice.

“I understood the full depth of my mistake last year when this lowlife Roannez told you about my treason. I wasn't in Languedoc at the time, I was already in Spanish Luxembourg with Gaston busy planning this unholy uprising of ours, but when I came back, my servant reported about a visitor received in my absence. Richelieu himself, alone and unarmed, had come to Toulouse knocking on my door.”

I start and spin around, eyes widening.

Cryptic, secretive _snake_ , that's where he had disappeared to.

Henri notices my shock, and gives a faint smile, much less surprised than I am by Armand's secrecy.

“You didn't know?” He huffs. “Well, I almost never knew myself. Felicia received him behind my back, and if my butler hadn’t overheard and repeated everything to me, I would have known nothing about it. My valet told me the Cardinal had offered us a fortune beyond belief in exchange for my returned fidelity to the State. He proposed, despite my betrayal, everything he could give, but Medici had promised my wife she'd make me Constable, Minister and Marshal. So she refused, foolish woman, sending Richelieu away with nothing more than scorn and sneer.”

I realise I was gaping because my teeth just clacked shut.

I remember the Red Beast's face as he came back to Paris last year. His eyes were circled in ugly shades of purple, and he spent three days carefully avoiding my presence. I just thought he was sick again and granted him some privacy to rest.

While in fact, he was mortified, and I didn’t notice a thing.

I cautiously step closer until my fingers touch the rim of the table again, and my eyes on Henri remain as blank as I can while he keeps talking, his shaking hands distractedly making sure his ugly head wound is still covered by hair.

“Richelieu had no interest in seeing me saved from the gallows. On the contrary, by offering me that money, he took the risk of keeping a traitor in his beloved pyramid of State. I realised, then, that the only reason that could have pushed him to do such a thing was to spare you the torment of losing a friend, and it struck me how wrong I had been about this man. How the Cardinal had repeatedly offered me gold from his own treasury to keep me in your entourage despite the changes he had to make to build the centralised power you both dreamed of. Blinded by pettiness and the bile of a woman, I failed to see the servant of France he had always been.”

My hands are gripping the table by now, and I don't think there would be a point in hiding it.

Armand. Armand, he knew, all along.

This tormented creature, crippled by self-loathing and fits of jealousy, went behind my back to bribe my treacherous childhood friend to stay on my side despite an oath signed to my mother.

_Soiling his beloved State to spare my bloody feelings._

My gaze meets the thin bottle of the best wine the vineyards of Cluny can offer, delivered this morning to Henri's cell, and my breath hitches once more at the lengths that lunatic's love for me can go to.

“There was nothing else for me to do then,” Henri adds, yanking me out of my thoughts, “than to make sure Gaston's army would remain as ill-advised and disorganised as possible – an easy task, I assure you - and have the least despicable death I could find upon this pathetic battlefield. Something I still managed to fail, as you can see.”

He lets out a long, shuddering sigh, anxiously brushing tiny breadcrumbs out of the cracks in the table's wood. I watch him perform his mindless task for a while, thankful for the relief of silence.

I vaguely realise I haven't spoken a word in a long time, but Henri knows me well enough not to be swayed by my lack of response. He knew me at a time where I couldn't align two words without stuttering horribly, stomping in helpless rage at my own ineptitude. He knew me at a time where I chose silence more and more, locking myself into my thoughts and giving furious glares and bloodied fists as only windows to the turmoil of my mind.

He knew the loveless child I have been once- before anger devoured me alive.

So as my voice takes time to be heard in his lonely beige cell, he does what he always used to do. He searches my face for his answers. I suppose he read mostly distress and confusion there because he rubs his eyes in sheer regret, his voice resigned as he throws, “I don't expect you to understand me. I told you none of this will make sense to you. You are King of France, every breath of yours dedicated to your duty.”

_Oh, will you stop it with this crap_ , I wish I could hiss.

But it seems I'm out of luck. I still can't say a word, and he's only just begun.

“I know how unloved you have grown, Lion. I've seen the way your mother treated the child you once were. Eager, devoted as you tried hard to be, ready to do anything for one smile of hers, you were still left ignored, and she only ever praised the colourful jester your brother was.”

_Stop it._

I leave the table in a jump and start pacing again. The cell I thought quite wide now feels small and narrow, the prisoner's drawings and names pointing at me in accusing howls. I stop in front of his shelf and force myself to read the title of a few of his books, trying to chase away the echoes of Gaston's laughter as he overturned jars filled with spiders between the sheets of my sickbed.

Strategies of War used for Fox Hunting.

History of the Flintlock.

“Your father taken from you too soon, you were left on your own facing your mother's hunger for power, and all we young courtiers could do was to witness, powerless, the constant injustice brought upon you.”

_Please, just shut your mouth._

The War of the Gauls.

_Breathe in, breathe out._

_'Your father is there.'_ Mother said. _'Say your goodbyes.'_

My father's bedroom was a mess of shouting voices, panicked physicians and women's sobs. He lay there, still wearing his bloodied clothes, and I knew by the colour of his face that he would have no more words, no more smiles for me.

I think I cried, but no one heard. They all yelled, they all prayed. I tried to touch father's hand, but they pushed me away to make room for the priest. So I grabbed a corner of the sheets instead and knelt on the floor wailing in fear.

'The King is dead!', someone claimed at some point, and I felt cold, so cold inside.

'Long live the King”, the same voice said, but they were all looking at mother, not at me.

I supposed, at that time, that with the last breath of this huge, joyful man, the last warmth I could hope for had just gone from this world.

Breathe in, breathe out.

_I feel tears on my cheeks. Damn you, Henri._

“Every day I saw you turn into the closeted boiling young man you were doomed to be, your suffering so cruel, so unjustified it could only end in tragedy. Even in the choice of a wife, your mother has smothered every chance for you to find love, and despite all those years, all this warmth you've been denied, when the time came to choose between your mother and your duty, you cut away a piece of your own heart, to keep the cold, calculating machine of State that would serve France better.”

_Please, stop it, just stop it now._

My hands are clenched in fists, and my rage, my old rage is howling in my veins, whitening my vision, tightening my chest. I feel thick streams of salt water dripping down my face, and to hide that shame, I could set fire to the Bastille itself, so shut up, I beg of you shut up-

But this sentimental idiot I call a friend just sounds bloody _ecstatic._

“So I don't suppose my foolish, sentimental reasons could be understood by the infallible heart of a dutiful King. Don't they all call you Louis Le Juste after a-

_**“Stop it!”** _

A whole row of old books just fell on the stone tiled floor, along with a pot of balm and two porcelain plates, now shattered at the feet of the table. I am looming over our two glasses of wine, Henri’s collar twisted in my grip, and I’m lifting him a few inches above his chair to growl at his white, dismayed face.

“Stop telling me I can't understand, stop speaking to me that way! _You have no idea, Henri, and you never had! ”_

His hands hover weakly around my wrist, and though he does start to choke, start to whine, I only release him when I hear the thumping sound of his wounded leg, jerking with agony in the effort to hold him up.

He collapses on his chair, heartbreak ravaging his features, making the dry old wood creak miserably, and I remain leaning above him, seeking refuge once more in the familiar black pit of my own fury.

The Bastille guards, of course, have heard me and rushed to my rescue. The door bangs open, and I look aside at their confused faces, their swords raised. They seem quite ready to cut Henri in pieces, but a few seconds are enough for them to understand who exactly has been threatened here, and without a word from me they politely retreat in the corridor, closing the door behind them once more.

Still hardened by anger, my stare goes back to Henri, and I watch him shiver in shock, massaging his leg with fear and sorrow in his damaged eyes. Though I am terrified of what I'm about to say I realise, panting, that there is nothing I can do to stop myself by now, I feel it in the inexorable burning of my own heart.

Henri is the last man alive who has seen the boy I once was, the last shattered mirror of my ruined childhood, and he'll be dead in two hours.

I'm going to kill the remains of my own youth by beheading that brave, precious man, and the overwhelming truth is I can't bear to see him die while being so bloody wrong about me.

For my own deliverance, or for his parting gift, I want Henri to see, _I want him to understand._

“A king is not everything I am.” I let out between my teeth, almost stunned by my own words.

Henri looks up at me, instinctively pulling his hair back above his nasty, oozing wound, holding on to what’s left of his pride.

“Your Majesty, you can’t…” he tries, but I scare his mouth shut by a violent raise of my hand, and he recoils in his seat.

“I am more than my bloodline,” I growl, unable to control the inexorable flow of my speech. “I am more than the sum of my duties, more than the latest face they carved on French coins. I am a man, Henri, just like you, I have made my mistakes, and I have committed my sins, so don't you bloody dare tell me I can't understand.”

I inhale, shaking, exhausted by so many words forced out of my throat, dazzled by the fact that this might be the first and last time I say them out loud, and slowly slide backwards until I sit in my chair facing Henri.

My old friend stares at me at first, still petrified in the prostrate attitude he had when I started to shout, but after a while, I hear a faint gulping sound, and he gradually shifts back to a less painful posture.

“Y- You?” He stammers. “How c-can you…?”

I watch him in disbelief. He has known me for more than twenty years, and it still comes as a shock to him that I may not be a monolithic paragon of law, heartless and detached, living a bland life dictated by war strategy and Court protocol alone.

_I guess I am the dull King._

Henri, please remember. Please tell me there is something else, something else than this, alive somewhere in your mind. Tell me that twenty years of barren obedience to everything that was expected of me hadn’t erased your memories of a time when I was still true to myself.

I push and slide my own glass around, fumbling for a way to make him realise, searching through those pictures I always thought safer forgotten until a soft, youthful face comes back to my eyes and I blurt out, “Do you remember François? François d'Estrées?”

Henri blinks slowly, and his face lightens up.

“Casque d'Or!” He exclaims. “Of course I remember him. Dashing young lad. Had been living in the Louvre with us for a few months while his father and yours discussed the reorganisation of the artillery that never actually happened.”

I give out a nostalgic huff because I had forgotten that nickname. It was given to him, I think, because of François’ thick unruly curls, the colour of ripe wheat. D'Estrées was said to have the most handsome face of the Louvre back then, but this is not what I had noticed the most.

“Those few months,” I go on, catching Henri’s gaze, “do you remember how they ended? Just before he left for his lands in Noyon.”

He winces. _He knows._

He remembers exactly, I see it clearly in the way he waves his hands around as if they could help him fly away from that troublesome moment in time.

“Ah.” He coughs, embarrassed. “Listen, Your Majesty, it was all so long ago, it...”

“Tell me what happened,” I order, nailing him on the spot, leaving him no chance for escape.

He frowns, instinctively jerking away from my command in a pleading whine first, but as I keep my eyes fixed upon his, resolute, imperious, he ends up passing his hands on his mouth and muttering.

“You... you liked Casque d’Or very much. His relentless energy, I suppose, and his quick wits. He shared your dreams of unity and strength for France, though he had no better idea than you about how to make them true. Around your thirteenth birthday, I think, you started to spend a lot of time with him, but while you couldn't seem to get away from François, it seemed he progressively made you quite nervous. Your usual games of duelling and wrestling became more and more violent, and at some point whenever you were with him, we all thought it better to take a few steps back. Until, well, you know.”

Yes, I know, you bloody idiot, I know very well, this memory has been the core of my shame for endless years, but that’s not the point. I want _you_ to understand.

“Go on.” I spit, and Henri, red-faced and upset, braces himself on his chair before he exhales.

“Until the day I found you. I found both of you in the gardens, near the tall willow tree. You were standing, out of breath, your face soaked in blood and tears, above François lying unconscious at your feet, his hands and head…badly wounded. I called for the physicians, and you ran away, overwhelmed. I didn’t see much of you afterwards. But before his father hurried away from Paris in fear of a scandal, Casque d’Or, on his sickbed, had time to tell me why you beat him, your dearest companion, into such a bloodied pulp.”

What inevitably follows hurts me more than it bothers Henri, no doubt, but I still keep my eyes upon him, silent and unwavering, forcing him to see it through. My old friend knows, by now, what I want him to say, and despite his heavy discomfort at the dark, shameful memory, he bravely rises up to the challenge.

“He told me he had noticed your … desire for him, and while I expected the fight to have been sparked by his refusal, I was stunned to learn you started to beat him up because he accepted. The minute he confessed to you that your attraction was returned and proposed you... acts of intimacy, you reacted in unstoppable violence.”

I nod my appreciation of Henri’s courage and avert my eyes to the peaceful skyline of Paris.

François was said to have the most handsome face of the Louvre, but this is not what I had noticed the most.

It was the way his throat vibrated as he laughed, the way his shoulders swelled as he prepared for a run. The way his thighs flexed as we rolled on the ground and the way his sweat smelled like wilderness.

Before I understood, I was doing everything I could to fight him more and more, gripping him tighter as I pinned him under my weight. It happened often. I wasn’t truly stronger, only angrier, and he looked far too happy to let me win anyways. But though my mother was keeping me locked up and uneducated at the time, I wasn't stupid enough to fail to see the signs. I knew. I had read the tales and pamphlets about my grandfather Henri III, and how he occupied his evenings with d'Epernon. I had heard the soldiers talk around the stables about what happened in siege war camps. I knew.

I knew, _and I hated it._

I hated the warmth in my guts whenever François pushed me down into the grass, I despised the glow in my heart when he grabbed my shirt a bit longer than necessary. I had seen where my father's sins had led him, and I wanted to be better than that. I wanted to be pure, I wanted to be perfect, deserving, maybe, of that love I couldn't reach, and what did I find stirring in me instead?

_The nameless, unforgivable sin._

I tried to ignore it, I tried so hard, I tried to smother this plague deep into my own guts, but François kept running towards me every day, his thick blonde curls waving around his grey eyes.

'Run for your life, Sire!' He used to laugh, and though I knew my sole duty was to cast this boy away from my sight forevermore, every day I just stood my ground, letting him throw himself at me with despicable delight.

I thought it would pass, I thought I could will this torture into silence if I waited long enough, but one day, this one day, as we rolled into the mud below the willow tree, wrestling for the only practice sword we hadn't broken yet, he stopped fighting beneath me, laid there heaving for a while, and I wondered why he lowered his eyelids that way, since the sun was almost set far behind us, over the Louvre's gates.

The blunt sword was there just within his arm's reach, but he didn't move towards it. He just smiled, dreamy, exhausted, divine, and dropped his gaze down for a second.

I followed his eyes, looking down at myself. I hoped, with all my heart, that it wasn’t what I feared it was, but we were deep into August, and the fabric of my summer pants did nothing to hide my sinful need.

When I looked back up at him, shame was tearing my soul to shreds. _Don't mention it,_ I remember I begged him in silence, _don't mention it, save both our souls,_ but I was already struggling with speech at the time, and François didn't notice my torment as he let his grip around my arms turn to a soft, stroking embrace.

'I know a place in the East Wing attics' he said, 'where no one could possibly find or hear us.'

 _Don't do that, don't say a word,_ I pleaded, but all I could utter was a low, growling sound he found nothing short of endearing.

That's when he arched his hips, pushing his groin against mine to whisper ‘would Your Majesty care to carry our conversation to a safer place where I could pleasantly take care of him?'

I cried out in arousal and _completely lost my mind._

As I hit and hit his perfect face, breaking bones and tearing skin, as I almost killed him with my bare hands that day, I was killing the beast inside of me, I was killing the lust that soiled the perfect King I so fervently wanted to be.

Or at least I thought I did, until the Etats Généraux of 1614, when I saw that young priest, of 30 at most, striding to the tribune in a whirl of black robes to speak the most vibrant words I had ever heard in my short, miserable life.

All of them for my mother.

The skyline of Paris is blurred by a veil of saltwater, and I squeeze my eyes shut upon a tear. I feel a warm, shaking hand gently placed upon my sleeve, then, barely touching, a bit like some devout men can touch relics.

_Isn't it what I am, after all?_

I turn to Henri's wounded face, reading compassion and support there, enough to make me wonder, for a dazed moment, which of us exactly is death-sentenced here.

“Lion,” he soothes, concerned, “you were barely a child back then, lonely and confused, obsessed by the affection your family denied you, destroyed by the torture your wedding night had been, and God, so angry. Those... inclinations were nothing but flimsy, temporary mishaps, surely by now you have grown out of...”

I don't think I could speak steady enough, but fortunately, I don't have to. All I need is to keep looking straight into Henri's eyes. This man has known how to read my silence all his life.

His sentence crumbles and collapses into unstitched syllables, and his mouth slowly falls open. He stares, as wide as his scars allow him to, and he takes a long, deep breath before he breathes,

“Oh God, Lion.”

I clench my teeth and lower my eyes once. That's all the confirmation he requires.

I turn back to the woollen edges of his bed curtains, trying not to look at the howling names upon the wall.

_Where is the Christian King, what has he become?_

_Is it in his name we have been condemned?_

1585, Fournier Baptiste

Mort aux traîtres et aux impies.

_Your passion for this man is nothing short of mortal sin._

I let out a small cry of agony, and move to start pacing again, but Henri's hand on my sleeve gives a short tug. I glance back at him and gape, dumbfounded to see him smile.

“You know,” he says nonchalantly, “I always thought, somehow, that among the men of my regiments who engaged in this kind of ...embrace during the longest of siege battles, there were a few for whom it wasn't a last-resort relief, but a deep, genuine bond of souls instead. I have seen men love other men more beautifully than many others have loved their wives, and I have doubts, to be honest, about how much God, who must like all beautiful things, truly disapproves of these affections.”

My throat constricts in a pitiful gulping noise, and I vaguely realise many men have burned upon the stake for words like this. Two hours away from death, Henri is putting his very soul in jeopardy with such blasphemy, simply for the sake of comforting my shame.

But the brave man doesn't seem to care the slightest bit about the afterlife, focused on giving back, right now, just as much sincerity as I offered.

“I knew there was a possibility you'd be one of those men”, he adds, his eyes pained by sympathy and regret, “but I thought that after all those years, you had managed to bury these inclinations, just like the rest of your feelings, under a thick layer of duty.”

I exhale a bitter chuckle.

“I did,” I whisper.

No. The truth. All of it.

I can't let him die thinking I'm a monolith of virtue.

My deliverance. _His parting gift._

“I … I used to.” I correct.

I watch Henri's face closely as my meaning slowly sinks in, and he sits back in his chair, white as a sheet. His ruined leg gives out a few shudders, but he doesn't even wince. He instinctively checks the door, the window, even the walls around, and leans upon the table again, very low, and breathes with the faintest voice I've heard from him, “You...You have a...?”

I nod, sharp, dismissive. I'm not sure I am ready to hear whatever word he was going to choose.

Truly, I have no idea what reaction to expect from him. I didn't think it through, I guess. Not that it mattered much, after all. But this beaming smile of joy, I wouldn't have thought of in a thousand years.

“Oh, _Lion_ ,” He exults, as loud as his whispering allows. “I'm so glad you -wait, are you being cautious?”

“No one will ever know.” I let out with certitude.

He joins his hands upon his mouth, then, barely containing tears of sheer bliss, and I briefly wonder if he has gone mad.

“I never told you how sad I felt for you all those years, Lion” He sighs. “Thinking of you, so lonely, so forlorn, trapped forever in your golden cage up there in the Louvre. I thought God, law, and even your mother had condemned you to a life without love! You would have died, then, a poorer man than I ever was, but you're Louis de Bourbon, of course, and you were born to fight your way over any obstacle.”

I blink a few times, a bit shaken, I suppose, unable to adjust to the flood of his words. So I let myself be praised and cajoled for a while before I clear my throat in embarrassment and start pushing the debris of his porcelain pots around with the tip of my boot.

“Do I know him?” I suddenly hear, his voice barely above a murmur, but filled with childish excitement nonetheless.

I have a start and glare at Henri in outrage and disbelief, but he only arranges his hair over his wound again, even daring to roll his eyes at me.

“Come on, Lion!” He jokes. “In one hour and a half, you'll be literally walking me out of here straight to the gallows! Do you think I'll have time to write a pamphlet before then?”

I don't laugh. Not at all. I have a stunned glance for the door instead, picturing myself stepping outside next to him as he's led to his death with a bit more reality, maybe, than the times before, and I get up in a tormented snarl.

I meant to break something again, no doubt, but as I stand abruptly, my head spins a little, and I end up staggering towards that door to rest my back against the thick blind surface, feeling the solid wood anchoring me to the Earth.

He's right, _He's right._

I have to finish what I have started.

The truth. All of it.

My deliverance. His parting gift.

“You know him very well.” I breathe, without stuttering, but still averting my eyes.

I don't have to look at Henri to imagine him struggling through the list of all the men of the Court he knows well enough, and that's quite a lot. I hear him mutter, count, enumerate and dismiss for an almost hilarious minute before he lets out a desperate sigh.

I turn to him, and he spreads his arms in helplessness. I am amazed once more by the complete absence of sadness, fear or anguish in his eyes, so close to his last breath. His abused face only speaks of thrilled curiosity and wicked joy, just the way he used to look so many years ago, as we ran away from the kitchens with my father's cooks trotting on our tails.

Henri, my oldest friend.

The last mirror of my youth.

“Everyone does.” I give him as a cue, and I have a short nod for the bottle of wine, still standing untouched on the ancient table in front of him.

_The red, red wine of Cluny._

Henri stares at the bottle in perfect silence for a long time, and I know exactly when his thoughts click into place because I hear his breathing turn to shallow, panicked huffs.

“Richelieu?” He gasps. “ _Du Plessis_ Richelieu? But, Lion, this man is...”

“Relentless.” I cut in gently. “With quick wits. Sharing my dreams of unity and strength for France. Only, he knows exactly how to make them true, doesn't he?”

His eyes don't leave the bottle, as if every secret of the world could just be poured from it. He's still panting, a deep frown knitting his brow. Well, I can't blame him. He has minutes to adjust to a truth I spent years denying with all I had.

I wished, I swear, for a simpler kind of love, for a purer kind of life. But God put too much of what I needed in the slender hands of a mad priest.

Silence settles in the Treasure Tower cell for a while, and we almost hear the faint cries of sparrows beyond the barred windows as they fly around the Bastille with careless ease. Time is peacefully suspended until the bells of Saint Paul nearby strike six, and Henri rasps a desperate curse, trying to to get up, reaching out for me.

“Oh, Your Majesty,” he cries, “I am sorry. I am so, so sorry!”

I see his leg refusing to support his weight and rush to grab his arms before he falls on the floor like a straw puppet. At this moment, Henri II de Montmorency, Admiral of the Royal Fleet, sags against me and bursts into tears, gripping the fabric of my shirt.

“Medici said...” He sobs. “Well, she had planned, if the uprising succeeded in winning over Paris, to have Richelieu ...”

“Killed, I suppose,” I growl.

_Do things ever change?_

“Oh, Lion, please forgive me, I didn't know! Dear God, I almost took him away from you. I am a fool, a wretched fool, I-”

“Yes.” I hiss, pushing him away a little to look into his eyes. “Yes, you bloody are. But you loved your wife. I understand. You see, now, why I understand, don't you?”

Henri nods, tears rolling down his scarred jaw to pool into the silk of his collar, and though I know every sense of etiquette demand I help him back into his chair right now, I keep holding him upright with my both hands, gripping the strong arms I relied upon so many times, for one more city, one more mile, a little help, or my own life.

Henri, my dear friend.

_I knew it would only make it harder._

I gaze upwards at the darkening skies above Paris, and all the wars and bullets wounds of my life haven't prepared me, I fear, for what I'm about to do tonight. Lost in my silent imploring for courage, I don't notice his tears turn to a senseless, bittersweet laughter until he asks,

“...But I'm still going for it, aren't I?”

As I blink at him, confused, he chuckles and makes that very clear gesture of his thumb sliding across his neck.

“You know... **_sssh-tak_**.” He whistles, a playful wink closing his wounded eye.

My heart just turns to lead and sinks.

“ _Do you think I want to?_ ” I shout, giving him a rough shake, making him jolt from head to toe. “ ** _Do you think I bloody want to_**?”

He cringes a little, his hands raised to protect himself from the blow he surely thinks is coming, but I only want to hide my face, because I fear I am crying again. So I pull him flush against me, rough, uncaring, close my arms around his trembling frame and hold him tight, trying to make him feel what I'll never be able to say.

“I have to.” Is all I can utter. “A King may not be everything I am, but your King, tonight, is all I am allowed to be. ”

I sense a quivering gush of air against my shoulder as he sighs, but his voice is a lot steadier than mine as he speaks again.

“It's alright, Lion. It's only right. Medici would never have delivered her promises anyways. She was bound to hurt you sooner or later, and I couldn't have lived with myself. Since I started this mess anyway, I'm glad it ends this way, you know. I'm glad.”

I open my mouth, but I can't speak. I clap it shut and close my eyes, counting my friend's last heartbeats as the ticking clock of my own purgatory.

We stay like this for a while, I don't care how long. I don't want to know what time it is. I don't want to know anything. I'd give my life not to be King.

But at some point, Henri's leg gives up in a shudder, and he hisses in pain. Muttering apologies, I push him to his chair and circle around him, quickly wiping my face with my sleeve while I'm behind his back. He too takes some time to compose himself, rubbing his unsteady hands together, taking a few deep breaths, maybe, and stretching his neck with sinister cracking sounds.

“Come on!” He cheers, then, clapping resolutely once or twice. “No more sadness. We don't have much time left, and I want to look good for my last public appearance!”

I sit on the edge of his bed, crossing ankles on the wooden platform, eyeing the worn-out Bible on the nightstand with sour resent.

“There won't be any public,” I state, definitive. “I'm not leaving you to the flock of vultures the people of Paris can be. I have scheduled for it to happen behind closed doors, in the City House main hall, with only a few officers and myself.”

Our eyes meet, then, and how small he looks, in his beige and brown bubble of space, with shadows of the window bars crossing his face three times in merciless blue. How far they seem, those long-gone years, climbing up trees for acorns that we threw at the heads of Courtiers passing below.

How old we are, how long we've walked.

Here am I, Louis de Bourbon, struggling to sweeten the torture of killing my own friend.

Here he is, Henry de Montmorency, seeing his King at last as the wretched soul he truly is.

Watching our story end as the evening light decays.

“Thank you, Lion.” He says, and I just nod.

***

We had time left for only one game of cards.

He played, babbling about good old times, finally drinking the wine we had left intact for long hours in successive toasts to everything we found damn fit, from the glories of France to my father's old cooks.

His last glass, served by me as he superbly won our card game, he even raised for Richelieu.

“To the Generalissime du Plessis-...” He started.

Then he mumbled 'no' and banged his glass on the table. I think he was a bit tipsy at the time, and I felt grateful for the Cardinal's choice of the strongest Bourgogne France has given birth to this year.

Henri leaned towards me over the scattered cards, speaking unnecessarily low, his eyes squinted in comical secrecy.

“What do you call him in private?” he breathed.

I laughed because Henri truly seemed to picture Richelieu and I cuddling each other whispering pet names, while our relationship started with me beating him to blood once a month.

Besides, _'Red Beast'_ , I suppose, would only raise unnecessary questions.

“Armand.” I simply said. “I call him Armand.”

And Henri, delighted, raised his glass anew, higher than ever, and declared firmly with a courteous gesture around my head,

“To you, and your Armand.”

I gladly drank to that.

Our empty glasses hit the wooden table, and their dull thump blurred with the first knock of the Bastille Guards upon the cell's door.

Our mirth died with the last ray of daylight.

“It's time.” The lieutenant announced as he opened the door, and I had to bite my tongue to stop myself from yelling all of them away.

Henri noticed I think, that's why he stood up long before I did.

“Very well, gentlemen.” He greeted, and since his leg was still shaking in painful spasms, he humbly asked for my arm as support.

They gave him his military cloak, and the four decoration sashes he received after Montpellier and Saint Jean, two of those victories of his I didn't fail to reward. I let the guards help Henri into his boots and gloves, but as they called the prison barber to cut his hair, I categorically refused.

The last of the Montmorency stepped out of his cell intact, perched upon my arm, the lieutenant of the guards walking in front, the rest of them quietly following.

In the Bastille's courtyard, we met Treville and his men, at attention around the discrete carriage I had arrived with. Henri and the Captain, who had fought many battles together too, nodded at each other in heavy silence, their intense emotions poorly veiled.

I pushed my old friend into the vehicle and sat down, facing him. Inside, an old red-bearded priest was waiting, and Henri gasped in shock as he recognised the man who had married him.

“Father Pontel!” He exclaimed. “How can you be here?”

The old man bowed towards me then, and Henri understood it had been my will.

I waved away a new storm of thankfulness and snapped for the carriage to start. During the whole journey from the Bastille to the City House, I let them pray together, Henri remaining focused and tranquil in his last duties to God.

The City House officers had opened the main gates in advance so the small carriage could roll undisturbed straight into the hall. Such precaution was hardly necessary since Richelieu had turned the moment of Henri's execution into the greatest State secret of the year. Our sad cortege didn't even draw the attention of more than a hundred Parisians, and the door closed upon us in perfect, silent order.

As the carriage stopped, Henri looked up from his Bible, I remember, and paled horribly.

“Already?” He stammered.

I nodded.

We both knew it was our last minute before protocol forbid us the smallest word, and we stared at each other, broken and confused, unable to express our regrets, our hurt, our promises.

So Henri just threw himself at me and kissed my both cheeks, shaking violently in fatigue and repressed sentiment.

“Adieu, Lion.” He breathed, his brow touching mine.

And, as silent as I have been all my life, I just carefully arranged his hair over his battle wound myself, stroking it into place until the ugly scar was entirely covered. The pain in my eyes, I think, was obvious enough for my purpose, because Henri gave me the saddest of smiles, and sat back upon his bench.

Treville came to open the door, and I stepped out. The main hall was brightly lit, but cold as a grave, and the Captain jumped inside the carriage to fetch a black woollen coat that he wrapped around my shoulders.

I am pretty sure he patted my back, and now I think about it, it was highly inappropriate, but at the time, truth be told I didn't mind at all.

Because Henri got out of the carriage too, and a heavy ball of anguish formed instantly in my guts. I stepped aside to let him see the small assembly I had allowed in. A few men from his family who felt strong enough to witness the beheading. A handful of his lieutenants. Condé and d'Epernon. His wife, I heard, had entered the Carmelite convent of Toulouse the day after Castelnaudary's defeat, and didn't even send a note.

I ordered Treville to make sure Henri had time to say his goodbyes, and the Captain vigorously kept the officials away until all of Henri's friends got their moment. Meanwhile, I was led to the platform my chair had been placed upon, and sat there without a sound, watching the heavy curtains of black velvet stretched in front of every window of the Hall, bearing the Holy Cross and the fleur-de-lis, just the way I had asked for.

In front of me, there was a lower, yet wider platform, bearing the small cushion that seems to be the executioner Guillaume's trademark. I had noticed his dark, sturdy silhouette next to the gallows the moment I came in but made tremendous efforts to look anywhere but his way.

I didn't trust my strength enough to gaze at that gruesome sword of his for too long.

A City House officer in charge of the executions trotted close to me and cleared his throat. My eyes fixed upon the military sashes on my friend's chest, I didn't even spare him a glance.

“Your Majesty,” the tiny scarecrow muttered, “my duty is to inform you that the sentenced man's attire is highly irregular.”

Condé looked positively furious as Henri said his last words to him, banging his chest with his closed fist, murmuring promises of revenge no doubt, and I had the feeling this wouldn't end well. Meanwhile, oblivious, the small puppet was still babbling in my ear.

“Protocol requires the accused to wear a simple shirt and have his hair cut down.” He enumerated, bloody proud of himself. “His hands, also, should be tied during the entire -”

“One more word and _you're next_ ,” I growled, my eyes never leaving Condé's reddened face.

The pompous marionette crossed himself and stepped backwards, almost falling off the platform like a blind dog.

Henri was distributing his decorations to his kin and comrades, leaving his coat into the hands of d'Epernon. Straightening his lapel, he gently pushed his relatives away then, and walked, serene, straight to the gallows. Father Pontel helped him up the three steps of the platform, but that's all the compromise he granted his shattered leg. As Guillaume climbed upon the gallows behind him, he stood proud, steady, his peaceful eyes only for me.

Humbled by his courage, I straightened my own back, rubbing my face into composure, and did my best to hold his gaze.

Henri, my oldest friend.

The last memory of my youth.

Treville appeared at the corner of my eye, pale as a ghost, and came to stand at my left. I didn't want to leave Henri's face, but I glanced aside long enough to notice the Captain's hand, on the hilt of his sword, trembling with the same turmoil as I felt.

Guillaume reproduced the same gestures as those he did for Marillac, and I suppose all the others, uncaring for the name, rank or deeds of those he works upon. He laid down his black sword upon the rack and offered Henri a blindfold.

My old friend politely refused, keeping his eyes in my direction, offering me his peacefulness as a last forgiving gesture. I vaguely felt something cold on my cheeks, and I only understood it was the icy breeze of the Hall blowing upon my tears when Treville discretely laid his hand upon my shoulder.

Henri called for Pontel, said a few words to him, and as the priest started reciting the psalm my friend asked for.

_“Through the victories you gave, his glory is great. You have bestowed on him splendour and majesty. Surely you have granted him unending blessings and made him glad with the joy of your presence. For the King trusts in the Lord, and through the unfailing love of the Most High he will not be shaken.”_

“It’s for you.” Treville breathed without thinking, his wide eyes blurred with sorrow.

“I know,” I said, though at this moment I swear I could have spit in God's own face.

Guillaume gestured at Henri to kneel on the small cushion and seemed to be asking him to push his hair away from the back of his neck. I don't think the executioner is ever supposed to talk to the condemned, but I guess this has been a mark of respect for Henri's placid bravery.

My old friend complied, careful, even there, not to show his ugly wound, and as he knelt as gracefully as his leg allowed him to, he had a small gesture for me. He smiled, the bloody fool he smiled, and pointed towards the high ceiling, where a gigantic chandelier was hanging, radiant with two hundred candlelights.

 _'Look up'_ , his gesture said, and I understood.

I gulped around a wave of agony and lowered my head once as consent.

Guillaume went back for his sword, gripping it with both hands, and took his time to position himself, his expert eyes fixed on Henri's neck. When the executioner chose his place, Henri turned to him and said, his steady voice loud enough to be heard by everyone,

“Strike boldly.”

Visibly impressed, the thick man nodded.

He raised his blade in the air, Henri gave me a last pleading glance.

And as I promised, when the sword fell, I looked up to the ceiling.

**_Ssssh-tak._ **

I heard his head fall, and I'll hear it until I die.

I heard his body follow, a few cries of grief and anguish rising from the small group of his relatives.

I closed my eyes, slowly, perfectly aware the executioner was raising Henri's head towards me, but refusing to look at it. When Treville's hand gave my shoulder a short squeeze, I calmly ordered for Henri to be taken away with regards, and felt his touch leave me as he darted off.

I gave it all three minutes, head up, eyes closed, and with a sharp intake of breath, I finally looked down.

Henri was being wrapped in a white shroud, already stained with blood. I didn't see his head, only his left arm as Guillaume gently pushed it into the nest of thick fabric. The robust executioner lifted the body in one swift move and laid it on a stretcher in front of his family, who quickly carried him away towards the Hall's rear door.

I know everyone was expecting me to get up and leave, but as my eyes found the small pool of dark blood next to the cushion on the gallows, my shuddering body refused to obey me.

It was Treville, again, who was definitely beyond caring for protocol, who came back to help me up by roughly grabbing me under the arm.

“It's over, Your Majesty.” He blandly said, pushing me more than he led me back to my carriage.

The rest, I fear, is a bit of a blur. I remember the Captain gave up his horse to sit next to me.

“To your apartments, Your Majesty?” He asked, leaning towards me, searching for my eyes, but I couldn't focus on anything.

“No.” I breathed. “To the Palais Cardinal.”

He blinked, I think. But not for long.

The mist of Henri's death is only slightly releasing my senses by now, as I find myself standing in the Palais Cardinal's hall. His valets and four Red Guards run to meet me, and Treville asks for his orders.

The sounds gradually seem louder, the lights a bit brighter. I blink, sluggish, and stare at each one of their faces with dazed incomprehension. Charpentier, Armand's oldest clerk, asks me if I need some wine. I refuse and ask for a basin of warm water instead. They look surprised, no doubt because they don't see the pools of dark blood on my hands. As the valets rush away, I turn to Treville and focus on the copper buttons of his coat for an abnormal amount of time, I suppose.

“Your Majesty?” He tries, and he sounds truly concerned.

“Would you care to dine with me tomorrow night, Captain?” I blurt out, monotonous.

The Musketeer gapes for a second then bows stiffly.

“I... it would be a pleasure, Your Majesty,” he mutters, “but please, are you alright?”

I don't answer. _I don't know._

The basin arrives, and I dip a fresh cloth in the water to pass it on my face because I feel my cheeks plastered with salt. The salt doesn't go away.

I plunge my fingers in the basin and wash my hands twice with the soap that's being handed to me. The blood doesn't go away.

I don't think it ever will.

I feel a violent shiver crawling up my spine, and the soap hits the tiled floor with a wet sound.

“Dismissed,” I whisper, to no one and everyone.

And I start climbing the stairs up to Armand's study.

The moment I close the door behind my back, the smell of him chases away a bit more of Henri's shroud. Fresh ink, old papers. Herbal tea, and wood fire. His study wraps itself around me like a blanket made of autumn colours and ancient maps.

He's there, pacing around a delicately chiselled Earth globe like an ethereal moon of red velvet, stopping dead as I come in, gazing at me with wide, clever eyes, and understanding everything.

“Louis” he mouths in silence and has a full-bodied surge towards me, but he somehow restrains himself, glancing over his shoulder.

Behind him, sitting at the Cardinal's desk, his hawk Joseph is fixing his black stare upon me over the rim of a thick off-putting book.

The rabid monk looks so damn comfortable in that chair, a glass of watered wine next to him, along with a tray of bread and cheese. They were working, I am sure, in the efficient ease of their shared intellect, clicking together like the gearwheels of my old mill, because Richelieu, unlike me, is actually loved by loyal people, and he gets to keep his friends.

Shaking with exhaustion, barely able to think straight, I clench my fists and growl at Armand, nodding towards his old black monk.

“Would you kill him if you had to? For your glorious State, would you cut his head off?”

My Beast's eyes widen in shock, and he turns around to stare at Joseph. The papers he was holding crumble a bit in his twitching hands, and he bites his lips, struggling for a reply.

But before Armand finds his first word, Joseph quietly gets up and walks towards me, his palms turned upwards in a soothing gesture.

“Yes, he would, Your Majesty.” The demented priest offers. “Of course, he would, but he won't have to.”

He walks very close, enough for me to figure out each one of those wrinkles around his eyes, drawn on his skin by decades of wisdom. He lifts his bushy eyebrows in a softer expression, and for the first time, I think, he takes my closed fists in his hands and squeezes them heartily.

“He won't have to”, he adds, “because if I fail him, then I fail God, and the Lord will strike down the heresy I'd have become if I don't take my own life first.”

I snarl in rage, his pretentious speech of holy faithfulness hurting me more than anything, I don't need to hear how bloody trustworthy you are, you mindless monk.

I move to snatch my hands away from his grasp, turning my head aside in raw pain, but his grip on my fingers is surprisingly robust for a man of his age. I pull sharply, but he holds still, and when I turn back to him, enraged, he goes on with a careful voice.

“That being so, I have no merit.” He says. “I am a Capuchin monk, a soldier of God. I have turned my back, a lifetime ago, to all human emotions of this world, and there is nothing in my life to distract me from my path. No family, no comrades, no friends... no love.”

I steal a quick glance for Armand. He's standing right where he was, his documents scattered at his feet, his hands brought to his mouth, his eyes filled with worry.

Candlelight in his silver hair.

Home is candlelight in his silver hair.

I look back at Joseph, slowly understanding he's trying to comfort me in his own twisted way, diminishing himself to praise the battles, lost and won, by both Henri and myself.

“I am merely the embodiment of a purpose” he breathes, “my body and mind nothing but tools to be used for France's future. I cannot be compared to a man who has to fight through the infinite temptations of a warm, beating heart.”

I feel my chest unclench, anger and spite letting me breathe for a while, and I give the monk half a nod, I think, exhaling a bit of the tension that was crushing me.

He feels it, and smiles cheerfully, the sight absolutely uncanny on his stern, greyish face.

“Be at ease, Your Majesty.” He implores, giving my hands another rough squeeze. “Be at ease, I am begging you, for you are only a greater King by renouncing to the sentiment of a man. God above, who created mankind for love more than for the cruelties of war, sees and understands everything of your pain, just as he is receiving in divine compassion the soul of a man who has strayed away from his own heart.”

I had no idea how much I needed to hear this, I only know it now, by the way my eyes swell once more as if they weren't tired of crying already. If he notices anything, the capuchin flawlessly pretends not to and kisses my knuckles in devotion before he turns to Armand with a peaceful smile.

“Now, Eminence.” He gently calls. “You will forgive me I am sure, if I abandon our current task for my evening prayers?”

And as the Cardinal quickly nods, muttering “of course” with the ghost of his voice, Joseph bows low for me, goes back to the desk to grab his Bible and a mouthful of bread and strides to the door.

When he's gone, Armand stares at me in silence for a whole minute, and I don't need to speak a word about tonight. He reads everything, every detail of it, in the state of my clothes, the quivering of my hands, the pallor of my cheeks, the redness of my eyes. He lets his bright, loving gaze roam all over me, and for sure, he knows.

That's why he doesn't even make a sound. He just spreads his arms, his velvet coat hanging from his shoulders to the wooden floor, forming graceful wings of red brocade, opening wide to welcome me.

My moon, my storm, wicked demon, divine creature.

_My dear Armand, shadow in red, and Lamb of God._

With a broken sob, I throw myself in his embrace, collapsing against him.

I feel enveloped in layers of warm fabric as he closes his arms around my back, and when our cheeks touch, I howl in gratitude for the softness of his skin. I cry again, I cry anew, pouring my sorrow, my pain, my rage and my loneliness into the crook of his frail neck, twisting the robes around his waist between my feverish fingers.

I cry for a lifetime, I cry for one hour, I cry my heart away in incoherent words until my legs let go of me and I slide downwards, emptied of all strength, vanquished, destroyed.

The thick waves of his coat soften the impact of my body against the wooden planks, and though our hands are still joined, I realise as I look up into his caring eyes that I just knelt in front of him, and it brings me no trouble, no trouble at all.

Right here, tonight, I am no King anymore.

I am a friend, a son, a brother, a lover, a wounded soul just like any other on this wretched land, broken by grief and seeking refuge.

I am Louis, a man of simple tastes and ardent dreams, craving for love just like everything that breathes, looking up towards the light of the most perfect creature he ever met.

“Armand,” I call, and he just smiles. “Would you love me still, if I wasn't King of France? If I was a blacksmith, a cobbler, a baker, a cook?”

He gasps, shaken, and sinks on his knees at my level, cupping my face in delicate hands.

He looks at me that way again, then. The way he looked at me before. As if he'd truly want his whole world to be reduced to the simple care for my comfort. Beyond our names, duties and rank.

Beyond France.

Beyond time.

Beyond history itself.

“You are my King.”He breathes as a promise against the corner of my mouth. “You’d still deserve the title without an acre of land to claim yours or one single clean shirt to wear.”

I let out a strangled cry, and tilt my head aside to kiss him deeply, offering him a taste of my screams against the sweetness of his tea. Devouring his lips, I fumble through his robes, wanting everything of his warmth, everything of his skin.

Submit to me, I wish I could say, elevate me, _purify me._

But my eyes close against my will, and my arms grow limp around his waist. I give the last of my forces to get up and walk to his bed, only because I know he wouldn't be able to carry me there if I pass out on the floor.

I take off my clothes, everything, and tell him to burn them all. I don't want to see them ever again. I fall into his bed, then, eyes closed, and I vaguely feel him pull his cover over me before he lays down at my side, still in his heavy cloak,

“ _Je t'aime, Armand._ ” I breathe, worn-out, liberated, laying here at the very solstice of my life.

If he ever reacts to that, I only know it by the low whimper of rapture he exhales, burying his face into my hair as I finally succumb to the dark.


	5. EPILOGUE :   January the 17th, 1634, Council Room, The Louvre, Paris

Everything in him appeals to me.

His subtle elegance, his clever countenance.

My shadow, my moon, my fighter, my storm.

_The Red Beast of my palace._

He strides in the Council room, graceful and ominous, his priceless silk whispering low, his nonchalance perfectly faked. He slides towards my higher chair, his amber eyes for me alone, and bows delicately, as he always does. He drops his documents on the table, then, choosing once more to stand rather than sit, because though his submission to me is plain to see, he needs to show the Ministers he is the one to be looked up to, and his message, to this day, has never been missed.

They all freeze, they all stare.

_Richelieu has entered the Council._

His short, yet irreproachable words of salutation are quickly followed by a methodical summary of today’s diplomatic and political news, but while he drowns them all in the ocean of knowledge his inhumane memory can hold, I must admit, I’m barely listening.

I know I don't need to.

Because everything, every single thing that will be said and done in this Council has been decided yesterday night as usual, between him and me alone, in the refuge of his bedroom. Our army’s moves, our trade budget, names, duties, places and time, everything has been settled when our breaths were still shortened by the most sinful of pleasures.

I’m not listening. _I think, in fact, I'll never need to._

So I let myself grin dreamily instead, taking time once more to appreciate the graceful dance of his slender hands above his heaps of paper, the brushes of morning light into his silver hair, and the focused glow playing in his wide, dark eyes. As he moves, I relish those flashes of white skin around his neck like I would the sight of a rosebush touched by frost. Pale as winter, and yet so warm. I shamelessly indulge myself in the enticing lines of my Beast’s cheekbones, because, really, Council is still a puppet show dictated by Protocol, and I might as well enjoy myself.

Why wouldn't I?

All the work has been done, decisions have been made, future is on its way, and God, Armand, he's still magnificent. He looks serene, he looks peaceful, and I am glad, I guess, to see him so comfortable in a place where he has been once forced into so much fighting.

Council doesn’t matter more than it ever did, it’s true, but at least those last months I made it easier for him to take pleasure in it by replacing all those useless slugs that were disputing each and every one of his suggestions by other slugs, none the better to be honest, but all devoted to his cause at least.

It was more than time for some cleaning up anyway.

With the Medici exiled and Gaston powerless, Chevreuse was the only one left in the Louvre to truly want Richelieu dead. I thought her abandoned by most and suspected by all, but I should have known a genuine whore never stays alone for long. By means far beyond what I am willing to imagine, she managed to seduce old D’Epernon into her sick, devious plans last year of course, and I would have had no knowledge of it if I hadn't received, somewhere around March, a desperate letter from Armand.

He had fallen sick during a state inspection tour in Bordeaux and was fighting a vicious fever in the small castle of Vayres, that was once my father's property. Nothing serious at first, he wrote to me, his words pleading, his tone distressed. Well, nothing serious until twenty days before, when d’Epernon had crashed through the gates of Vayres with two hundred armed men for the first time, frightening Armand to tears, officially just to 'make sure the cardinal was still alive'.

“I wouldn’t allow myself to take Your Majesty’s precious time away from duties of the Court”, his handwriting apologised “if Monsieur d’Epernon hadn’t repeated the same unannounced visit, twice a day, for more than two weeks straight by now.”

I roared a loud string of insults. Making sure The Cardinal was still alive, eh? Ha! More likely making sure he'd die of sheer terror. _Traitorous old bag of filth._

I had to admit, this was, in fact, a clever move. Armand, glued to a sickbed a thousand miles away from anything that felt safe to him, and harassed by two hundred soldiers barging in his lodgings twice a day under the command of a sworn enemy, would inevitably end up destroyed by his own nerves. No matter how brave, how stoic he could be, without anyone to reassure him he was only weak and vulnerable down there, his madness bound to slip out of control and take over him eventually.

This scheme was far too elaborate for degenerate D'Epernon. The idea itself reeked of a more twisted, more devilish mind - a woman no doubt - and I knew only one who could come up with such a vile way to kill a man.

I summoned the black monk Joseph straight away, ordering him to gather his spies and intercept every letter, note or message that could possibly pass through Chevreuse’s chambers. Meanwhile, I called for a battalion to gather in Paris as soon as possible.

My brave, precious Schomberg had died of apoplexy on me a few months before, and only Bassompierre could answer to my demand at that time, but he arrived in the Louvre no more than five hours later with four hundred resolute men to which Treville had insisted upon adding fifty Musketeers of his own. It largely made up for all my sour regrets.

Many a questioning stare was raised towards me as I declared I was riding to Bordeaux with the battalion myself, but I didn't ask for council, I didn't ask for advice. I didn't even bother to think of any kind of pretence. I rode past the gates the same evening with my soldiers chanting on my tail, the crumpled letter from Armand still clutched into my hand, and I refused to name my endeavour by any other words that the hurried rescue of the man who was dearest to me.

Hurting Armand was hurting me, hurting me was hurting France, and this is the only justification I cared to give the world.

We crossed France in less than five days, and as we crashed into D'Epernon's men in the courtyard of Vayres, our fury nearly broke the whole castle down. My soldiers destroyed the old bastard’s squadron in half an hour, and the old goat slept in prison the very same night.

I rushed inside to find Armand buried in a messy, untended bed, thinner than ever, worn-out by fear and fever alike, barely alive, as good as gone. Shouting in outrage, I wrapped him in fur covers, hauled him in the carriage I brought along, and escorted him back to Paris without delay. I held his hand for six days straight, murmuring meaningless stories for as long as it took him to stop shivering in fear. I hummed unstitched songs into his ear until he fell into the first restful sleep he had in weeks. I told him I loved him, maybe ten times, I don’t remember, before his eyes cleared up from all worry and as we stepped out of the carriage in front of the Palais Cardinal, he could stand proud on my side.

When we walked into Armand's study, we found Joseph waiting for us with a bunch of intercepted letters in his hands. Chevreuse’s letters to England, discussing of her plans to have Richelieu replaced by her new lover Châteauneuf, once the news of his most welcomed demise would be confirmed and duly celebrated.

My hand around Armand’s arm clenched so hard he winced in pain.

It was time for some _cleaning up_ alright.

I wrote and signed Chevreuse’s exile to Dampierre twelve hours later, but after ten days, I changed my mind and ordered her to be pushed hundreds of miles further south to Couzières. Having her two hundred miles away from my sight was a pretty good thing, but six hundred miles down was even bloody better.

The next month, as the Parliament seemed willing to resist my latest law reforms, I ordered Bassompierre to besiege the whole building with his four hundred men and starve those ungrateful, unreliable dogs of nobility until they all accepted each and every one of my Edicts. The Parliament members yielded to my will after ten days of lockdown and were informed that if they ever dared to discuss my decisions again, their treason would be handled quite the same way.

In the beginning of May, revolts sparked anew in Languedoc, Touraine and Provence. I stopped trusting Condé and directly sent my Generals without a second of hesitation. Basompierre went South with two thousand, and la Force soon followed with eight. They both crushed all provinces’ intentions to rebel in merciless carnage, and before they left, they didn’t fail to carry my order to destroy as many strongholds as they saw fit in those disloyal lands.

_In all of this, Richelieu had no say, no say at all._

He didn’t suggest, advise, negotiate, or even ask for anything. He watched me, silent, humble, maybe a little stunned, maybe a little proud, and his papers remained tucked in their folders all along. He could see I knew exactly what to do, he could see I knew exactly how to act.

Armand, he always knows, after all.

It didn’t take me that much time, it didn’t take me that much effort.

All I had to do was to seize the power he had built, designed and prepared for me alone, taking the reigns of a Kingdom he had created for the hollow of my hand. All I had to do was to occupy that space, under God’s holy light, above everything else, that he had devoted his life elevating from the fertile soil of these lands.

All I had to do was to sit on the throne he carved with my name.

The pedestal of a divine, an absolute King.

Louis the Thirteenth, _Louis le Juste._

And from this altar that was the very legacy of me, grateful for all the changes, the wonders, the glories Armand tore out of a dormant century to offer my own bloodline, I first made France a safer place for him. To keep him whole, peaceful and content at my side, I swept France clean, I purged the country from each and every lowlife who could ever think of marring his fragile skin, just as I promised on that bright day, there in Versailles.

My storm, my moon, he had to be revered, feared and unquestioned just as he deserved, and for that, I knew exactly what to do, and how to act.

He didn't need to plead, arrange or even beg.

All he needed was to watch me sit on the throne of golden light he spent his life building for me, and witness a new sun rising upon the fields of France.

A brand new kind of reign. _A brand new kind of King._

Armand de Richelieu gave me my rightful place on this Earth, and in return, I gave him his.

A place right next to me, within my reach every hour of every day, meant for him, him alone, free from worry and free from fear. He settled there with ease, in the comfort of my love, and reached in a few months the highest peak of his glory.

He rules, steady by now, over his empire of shadows, and no name, no place, no scheme and no plan ever escapes his all-seeing eyes. He reigns upon his masterpiece, the State, like an archangel of machinery, ruthless, relentless, sleepless, merciless, crushing his enemies without a single clash of swords, destroying cities with ancient quills and maps. He governs and possesses miles of land, thousands of souls, systems of law, countless secrets.

He commands, he vanquishes, he conquers, and he destroys, all of this only to give it all to me. Darkness to my light, moonlight to my sun, each time he yanks another dawn from the hands of misfortune, he never fails to step back and let divine glow fall on me alone.

_It's all for you,_ his soft smile always says. _It's all about you._

My vision, I knew it, would be built by both of us or not at all, our names entwined on the pages of History. Sometimes, as we contemplate our dreams come true on the old maps of his study, he lets out a tired sigh, and he looks so much like a man whose work on Earth is done then, that I find it almost frightening.

Every time he worries me, I have one of those small gestures for him, a silent reminder of our shared love, and though I think we are both strong enough to rely a bit less on each other's help by now, he always welcomes it with the same intense, burning joy.

Just like now.

Just like now as his review of the ordinary matters at hand comes to an end and he clears his throat in apprehension, because he is about to expose something immense, something new, and he fears the Council is not ready for the heights of his thinking.

Just like now, as I offer him a tranquil smile and brush the back of his sleeve with only one hand, light enough to stay unnoticed, firm enough to make him shiver.

_I am here_ , my hand whispers.

 _It’s all for you_ , his shiver promises.

Then, encouraged, he stands tall and speaks.

He speaks about the strengthening of the pact between France and Sweden, and our continued funding of Gustav-Adolphe's army to make sure a tight line of neutral or friendly states is conquered across the whole German Empire. With that, we ensure that there will never be a peace treaty signed in Europe without France having a word in it, and if there is war, after all, everything left of the Rhin is likely to fall on our side anyway.

He speaks about Joseph's continuing work to set the German Empire against each other, dislocating Baviere and Boheme away from the Ferdinand II's empire, and going as far as nonchalantly helping the conspirators who killed the overambitious, over-powerful Wallenstein.

He speaks of our plans to promise independence to the United Provinces if they refuse to follow Spain into a war against France, pushing more and more paws towards us if our attempts to avoid the worst ever come to fail.

He speaks of his tremendous efforts to promote and finance trade corporations all over France, pushing our industry to higher grounds of quality and prestige, so that not only those who used to buy in Italy or Spain turn to France instead, but Italy and England themselves start begging for exportation contracts.

He speaks of his plans for a unity of language beyond faith and loyalty to the Crown, erasing all traces of the Dark Ages by the enforcement of a brand new, national French, beaming all across the Kingdom from the high dome of an Academy he intends to build right here, on the opposite side of the Seine.

He speaks of roads, harbours, bridges and trade fleet. He speaks of schools, hospitals, post services and orphanages. He speaks of the people of France, from Amiens to Argentine, and a country where every one of them can thrive. He speaks of the whole world, still unexplored, still unexploited, and the wealth and wonders expeditions could bring us back from foreign lands. He speaks of the two next centuries as he would of long-time friends, and with every word, the future he's pushing closer to our reach every passing day becomes so palpable it's dizzying.

He speaks, magnificent, his chin held high, his eyes aflame, his gentle voice fervent, earnest, fiery, heartfelt. He speaks, his hands definite, his stance imperious, making it very clear that he will be forevermore someone to be looked up to.

The clever snake, the red demon.

_The Dictator of all Shadows._

At some point, though, his speech comes to an end, and my stare reluctantly leaves him to check around the Council table. Silence is heavier than iron, deeper than a tomb. They all gape, they all heave, barely able to stomach how far this man is willing to go, and I see, right now, crystal clear, Armand's name slowly turn into a legend upon this circle of shocked faces.

I smile, drunk on triumph, high with pride. Darkness to my light, moonlight to my sun.

_My fighter, my storm. My one, my only love. This is nothing less than you deserve._

How long you have walked, how far you have come, from the mud of Luçon to my own Council Room. How hard you have fought, how deeply you suffered, how much you have sacrificed, again and again, for this short blessed moment, standing at my right, bathing in morning light.

_Well, look, Armand, look, feast your eyes. See your pain redeemed, see justice is done._

I let him take in the sight of their staggered awe some more, knowing this might be the best medicine I could offer against the low voices of his nightmares before I clap my hands twice and declare quietly, “Council dismissed.”

My words kick the Ministers back to reality and they all jump, getting up in a hurried mess, muttering fearful apologies. They trot out of the room, one by one bowing low for both of us, dropping stunned praise on the lower rim of Armand's robes.

When they're all gone, I exhale, satisfied, complete, and slouch back in my chair to close my eyes, letting the yellow shimmer of mid-day gently pierce through my eyelids. I don't speak, I don't move, I simply wait for Armand to shift closer to me, imploring for attention. I'll kiss him then I think, softly at first, and steal a few more of those lovely moans of his. I'll grab his waist then, I guess, harshly as he likes it, and lick down his neck until he begs me to follow him to his bedroom.

I wait, merry, eager, but the meek brush of his fingertips against my cheek I was expecting as naturally as springtime after winter, well, it never comes.

What tears me out of my daydream is a terrifying, cracking noise instead.

I have a start, open my eyes and stare at him blinking.

He's leaning against the table, his face turned to ashy grey, his eyes reddened and vitreous, his whole body shaking harshly, and God, what I just heard was him coughing. The nastiest, driest sound I ever heard coming from a human throat, surging from deep inside, hissing of bad omens. It snaps his whole spine every time, making his joints crack, and at some point, it seems to hurt so bad his legs are giving up on him.

” _ **Armand!**_ ” I call, moving to get up, but he gently raises a trembling hand, averting his eyes, swallowing his fit of couch back in his chest and wiping his face with a furtive sweep of his sleeve.

”I am fine, _mon Roi_.” He croaks, but I believe none of it.

He is sick. He is tired.

Fever never left him, and _pain never let go._

His limitless mind pushes his body to give out much more than it ever had, with every endless day, with every sleepless night, and each time exhaustion nails him to a bed, he gets back up a little bit weaker than before. He knows I am sure, that his life's work, though it will carve his name into the book of all legends forevermore, will demand his life in exchange one day. He knows, and so do I, because all great men learn, sooner or later, than the greatest futures never come without a price. Against the crossroads of fate, King as I can be, there is nothing that I can do. I can purge this country of all his foes, I can destroy anyone who ever stands in his path, but no matter how many I execute, imprison or exile, I will never cure this wicked sickness inside.

_Absolute power cannot heal that kind of cough._

Brave as he is, my shadow, my storm, I know he'll fight it to the end, I know he'll stand tall as long as he can, but that black, fateful day, I see it coming closer now, in the faint trembling of his hands, and to my raw terror, he does look like a man whose work on Earth is done sometimes.

There are many battles that are never meant to be won, and we both know by now one of them lies inside his chest. Before long, he will be gone, my fighter, my storm, and I will not walk much further on without the warmth of his presence. God has put too much of what I need, too much of what I am between his pale slender hands, and I will wither, and I'll crumble, unfit to face my next battle. This ultimate price, we will both be paying it, him under the weight of exhaustion, me in the frozen Hell of his loss, and the thought alone nearly stops my heart with agonising, bottomless pain.

There is nothing that I can do against the ticking clock of our breaths.

_Absolute power cannot stop the tide of time._

Before I think of it, I snap my fingers at him.

“Kneel,” I order, my voice broken, my breath laboured, and he turns to me in raw concern.

He doesn't need more than a heartbeat to read my face as one of his old maps, and he understands I want him at my feet to reassure the two of us. He slides down, then, graceful as a river of red roses, pooling on the floor in front of me with a low hiss of heavy silk. His hands fall on my lap, weightless like autumn leaves can be, and when his forehead gently leans down to touch my thigh in the elegant echo of a bow, we both sigh in sheer relief.

At this moment, just like before, ten years ago, my fingers pass through his hair. It's still as soft, warm, and enticing as it has always been, countless hues of silver shining for me in bright daylight, and when I hear his breathing ease, I realise I am stroking.

“Armand,” I whisper again. He doesn't reply, but his fingers grip the soft fabric around my thighs a bit tighter, and all is said between us.

_All is said, forevermore._

My shadow in red, darkness to my light.

My moon, my storm, my burning heart, my anthracite.

My monster in silk, secrets to my truth.

My friend, my love, the tainted priest, the lamb of God.

Everything I asked, he did, everything I wanted, he gave.

_I couldn't hope, I know, for a purer kind of love._

As I sit here stroking his hair today, watching the frost outside graze my rosebushes like a desperate lover's kiss, none of the pillars that were holding the ancient ways of this country remain, and France is one under my reign. By the strength of his slender hands, the gearwheels of his clever minds and the inflexions of his gentle voice, this man has yanked eighteen million people out of the past century and thrown them into the next, turning France in less than ten years into the most modern country in the continent.

All I had to do was sit on that throne of golden light and take the reins of a new dawn.

A brand new kind of reign, _a brand new kind of King._

Softly, humbly, his warm fingers search for mine and guide them to his lips. He kisses my hand, just like the first time, and in a heartbeat, I understand.

_This_ was God's plan.

This is His intent, as he deprived me of all the warmth I once hoped for, to place my destiny in the burning devotion of a mad priest. He took away the affection of everyone I used to love, so I could welcome the boundless love of this one man I used to hate.

This was God's plan, this is it.

This exact moment in time, and nothing else.

Because in this white, this bright instant, Armand, together we have brought the people of France to the gates of a promised land they'd never think as possible.

We have pushed this Kingdom into a golden age none of us will ever, ever touch.

This tree we have planted, my love, will give his fruits to someone else, but be reassured, forevermore, that none of the centuries to come, no matter how wondrous, no matter how far, will ever see any other man who can compare to the mere sound of your name.

My methodical madman, my overanxious tyrant.

_The tainted priest, the Lamb of God_

Armand, after all.

Only Armand.

_“Dans aucun siècle il n'y a eu un homme semblable.”_  
Cardinal Jules Mazarin, December 1642.

***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is finally over, my dear, beloved, deranged readers. Around 200K words of history, feelings, angst, epic battles and sweet romance. A few truckloads of smut too. 
> 
> I was persuaded, as always, that this book would spark interest in no one, and I have been so glad to find comments and kudos popping up. I wanted to thank, from the bottom of my heart, anyone who had the courage to read all of this stuff right to the end and find me here at the epilogue of this story. If you do and still haven't commented, please drop a comment and tell me what you think, a few words would mean a lot to me. 
> 
> Merry Christmas to you all, and may your journey towards the best version of yourself be a bit shorter, and a bit easier than the one of Louis. 
> 
> Love, genuinely, 
> 
> Freya.


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